Method for transmitting uplink signal in a wireleess communication system and apparatus for the same

ABSTRACT

Provided are a method of transmitting, by a user equipment, a uplink signal in a wireless communication system. The method includes receiving control information related to a codeword cover used for a multiplexing of a multiple of user equipments from a base station, generating a transmission symbol of a specific length by repeating a data symbol in a specific time unit, generating the uplink signal by applying the codeword cover of the specific length to the generated transmission symbol, and transmitting the generated uplink signal to the base station through a single tone.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §119(e), this application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/264,855, filed on Dec. 8, 2015, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a wireless communication system, more particularly, to a method of transmitting an UL single in a wireless communication system and apparatus for supporting the same.

Related Art

Mobile communication systems have been developed to provide voice services while ensuring the activity of a user. However, the mobile communication systems have been expanded to their regions up to data services as well as voice. Today, the shortage of resources is caused due to an explosive increase of traffic, and more advanced mobile communication systems are required due to user's need for higher speed services.

Requirements for a next-generation mobile communication system basically include the acceptance of explosive data traffic, a significant increase of a transfer rate per user, the acceptance of the number of significantly increased connection devices, very low end-to-end latency, and high energy efficiency. To this end, research is carried out on various technologies, such as dual connectivity, massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), in-band full duplex, Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), the support of a super wideband, and device networking.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a method of supporting a multiplexing between user equipments (UEs) through an orthogonal codeword cover using a DFT matrix in NB-IoT system.

The present invention also provides a method of allocating a codeword cover to UEs in consideration of a coverage class in order to avoid an inter-cell interference in NB-IoT system.

The present invention also provides a method of supporting a multiplexing between UEs by using a frequency hopping method.

In an aspect, a method of transmitting, by a user equipment, a uplink signal in a wireless communication system is provided. The method includes receiving control information related to a codeword cover used for a multiplexing of a multiple of user equipments from a base station, generating a transmission symbol of a specific length by repeating a data symbol in a specific time unit, generating the uplink signal by applying the codeword cover of the specific length to the generated transmission symbol, and transmitting the generated uplink signal to the base station through a single tone.

The specific time unit may be a symbol unit, a symbol group unit, a slot unit, a subframe unit, a subframe group unit, or a wireless frame unit.

The codeword cover of the specific length may be an orthogonal codeword cover which is generated using a DFT (discrete Fourier transform) matrix.

The codeword cover of the specific length may be an orthogonal codeword cover corresponding to a specific row vector of the DFT matrix.

The row vector of the DFT matrix may have indexes of from 0 to {(value of a specific length)−1}, and the specific row vector may be a row vector corresponding to an index close to the value of the specific length or 0.

The codeword cover may have a mapping relation with a coverage class.

The coverage class may be determined using at least one of a distance between the user equipment and the base station, a size of a receiving power in the base station, and a size of an interference influencing an adjacent cell.

The control information may further include at least one of frequency hopping information indicating a frequency hopping pattern related to transmission of the uplink signal or information indicating whether the frequency hopping is used.

The frequency hopping pattern may be configured differently per cell.

The control information may be received from the base station through RRC (radio resource control) signaling or DCI (downlink control information).

In another aspect, a user equipment for transmitting an uplink signal in a wireless communication is provided. The user equipment includes a radio frequency (RF) unit for transmitting/receiving a wireless signal and a processor functionally connected to the RF unit, wherein the processor is controlled to control information related to a codeword cover used for a multiplexing of a multiple of user equipments from a base station, generate a transmission symbol of a specific length by repeating a data symbol in a specific time unit, generate the uplink signal by applying the codeword cover of the specific length to the generated transmission symbol, and transmit the generated uplink signal to the base station through a single tone.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates the structure of a wireless frame in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 2 illustrates a resource grid for one DL slot in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 3 illustrates the structure of a DL subframe in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 4 illustrates the structure of an UL subframe in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of a form in which PUCCH formats are mapped to a PUCCH area of an UL physical resource block in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 6 illustrates the structure of CQI channel in the case of a general CP in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 7 illustrates the structure of ACK/NACK channel in the case of a general CP in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of generating 5 SC-FDMA symbols during one slot and generating the generated 5 SC-FDMA symbols in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of a component carrier and a carrier aggregation in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example of a subframe structure according to a cross carrier scheduling in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of a transmission channel processing of an UL-SCH in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example of a signal processing process of an UL shared channel which is a transport channel in a wireless communication system to which the present application is applicable.

FIG. 13 illustrates a reference signal pattern which is mapped on a DL resource block pair in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 14 illustrates an UL subframe including a sounding reference signal symbol in a wireless communication system to which the present invention is applicable.

FIG. 15 illustrates an example of a multiplexing of legacy PDCCH, PDSCH and EPDCCH.

FIG. 16 illustrates a section of a cell division of a system supporting a carrier aggregation.

FIG. 17 illustrates the structure of a frame used for SS transmission in a system which uses a basic CP (Cyclic Prefix).

FIG. 18 illustrates a frame structure used for SS transmission in a system which uses an extended CP.

FIG. 19 illustrates two sequences in a logical region being interleaved and mapped in a physical region.

FIG. 20 illustrates a frame structure in which M-PSS and M-SSS are mapped.

FIG. 21 illustrates a method of generating M-PSS according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 22 illustrates a method of generating M-SSS according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 23 illustrates an example of a method of implementing M-PSS to which a method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 24 illustrates how UL numerology is stretched in a time domain.

FIG. 25 illustrates an example of time units for the UL of NB-LTE based on 2.5 kHz subcarrier spacing.

FIG. 26 illustrates an example of an operation system of NB LTE system to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 27 illustrates an example of an NB-frame structure of 15 kHz subcarrier spacing to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 28 illustrates an example of NB-frame structure for 3.75 kHz subcarrier spacing to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 29 illustrates an example of NB subframe structure in 3.75 kHz subcarrier spacing to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 30 illustrates an example of PUSCH processing in NB-IoT system to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 31 illustrates an example of an LTE turbo encoder used for PUSCH in NB-IoT system to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 32 illustrates an example of a method of applying a codeword cover proposed in the present specification to a repeated symbol of a time domain.

FIG. 33 illustrates an example of a method of using different orthogonal codes depending on the coverage class proposed in the present specification.

FIG. 34 illustrates an example of a method of multiplexing an UL system of a user equipment by using a codeword cover and a frequency hopping pattern which are proposed in the present specification.

FIG. 35 is a flowchart showing an example of a method of multiplexing an UL signal between user equipments, which is proposed in the present specification.

FIG. 36 illustrates an example of an internal block diagram of a wireless communication device to which the methods proposed in the present specification are applicable.

DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS

Hereafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. A detailed description to be disclosed hereinbelow together with the accompanying drawing is to describe embodiments of the present invention and not to describe a unique embodiment for carrying out the present invention. The detailed description below includes details in order to provide a complete understanding. However, those skilled in the art know that the present invention can be carried out without the details.

In some cases, in order to prevent a concept of the present invention from being ambiguous, known structures and devices may be omitted or may be illustrated in a block diagram format based on core function of each structure and device.

In the specification, a base station means a terminal node of a network directly performing communication with a terminal. In the present document, specific operations described to be performed by the base station may be performed by an upper node of the base station in some cases. That is, it is apparent that in the network constituted by multiple network nodes including the base station, various operations performed for communication with the terminal may be performed by the base station or other network nodes other than the base station. A base station (BS) may be generally substituted with terms such as a fixed station, Node B, evolved-NodeB (eNB), a base transceiver system (BTS), an access point (AP), and the like. Further, a ‘terminal’ may be fixed or movable and be substituted with terms such as user equipment (UE), a mobile station (MS), a user terminal (UT), a mobile subscriber station (MSS), a subscriber station (SS), an dvanced mobile station (AMS), a wireless terminal (WT), a Machine-Type Communication (MTC) device, a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) device, a Device-to-Device (D2D) device, and the like.

Hereinafter, a downlink means communication from the base station to the terminal and an uplink means communication from the terminal to the base station. In the downlink, a transmitter may be a part of the base station and a receiver may be a part of the terminal. In the uplink, the transmitter may be a part of the terminal and the receiver may be a part of the base station.

Specific terms used in the following description are provided to help appreciating the present invention and the use of the specific terms may be modified into other forms within the scope without departing from the technical spirit of the present invention.

The following technology may be used in various wireless access systems, such as code division multiple access (CDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), single carrier-FDMA (SC-FDMA), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and the like. The CDMA may be implemented by radio technology universal terrestrial radio access (UTRA) or CDMA2000. The TDMA may be implemented by radio technology such as Global System for Mobile communications (GSM)/General Packet Radio Service(GPRS)/Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE). The OFDMA may be implemented as radio technology such as IEEE 802.11(Wi-Fi), IEEE 802.16(WiMAX), IEEE 802-20, E-UTRA(Evolved UTRA), and the like. The UTRA is a part of a universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS). 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) as a part of an evolved UMTS (E-UMTS) using evolved-UMTS terrestrial radio access (E-UTRA) adopts the OFDMA in a downlink and the SC-FDMA in an uplink. LTE-advanced (A) is an evolution of the 3GPP LTE.

The embodiments of the present invention may be based on standard documents disclosed in at least one of IEEE 802, 3GPP, and 3GPP2 which are the wireless access systems. That is, steps or parts which are not described to definitely show the technical spirit of the present invention among the embodiments of the present invention may be based on the documents. Further, all terms disclosed in the document may be described by the standard document.

3GPP LTE/LTE-A is primarily described for clear description, but technical features of the present invention are not limited thereto.

General System

FIG. 1 illustrates a structure a radio frame in a wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

In 3GPP LTE/LTE-A, radio frame structure type 1 may be applied to frequency division duplex (FDD) and radio frame structure type 2 may be applied to time division duplex (TDD) are supported.

FIG. 1(a) exemplifies radio frame structure type 1. The radio frame is constituted by 10 subframes. One subframe is constituted by 2 slots in a time domain. A time required to transmit one subframe is referred to as a transmissions time interval (TTI). For example, the length of one subframe may be 1 ms and the length of one slot may be 0.5 ms.

One slot includes a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols in the time domain and includes multiple resource blocks (RBs) in a frequency domain. In 3GPP LTE, since OFDMA is used in downlink, the OFDM symbol is used to express one symbol period. The OFDM symbol may be one SC-FDMA symbol or symbol period. The resource block is a resource allocation wise and includes a plurality of consecutive subcarriers in one slot.

FIG. 1(b) illustrates frame structure type 2. Radio frame type 2 is constituted by 2 half frames, each half frame is constituted by 5 subframes, a downlink pilot time slot (DwPTS), a guard period (GP), and an uplink pilot time slot (UpPTS), and one subframe among them is constituted by 2 slots. The DwPTS is used for initial cell discovery, synchronization, or channel estimation in a terminal. The UpPTS is used for channel estimation in a base station and to match uplink transmission synchronization of the terminal. The guard period is a period for removing interference which occurs in uplink due to multi-path delay of a downlink signal between the uplink and the downlink.

In frame structure type 2 of a TDD system, an uplink-downlink configuration is a rule indicating whether the uplink and the downlink are allocated (alternatively, reserved) with respect to all subframes. Table 1 shows he uplink-downlink configuration.

TABLE 1 Downlink- to-Uplink Uplink Switch- Downlink point Subframe number configuration periodicity 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 5 ms D S U U U D S U U U 1 5 ms D S U U D D S U U D 2 5 ms D S U D D D S U D D 3 10 ms  D S U U U D D D D D 4 10 ms  D S U U D D D D D D 5 10 ms  D S U D D D D D D D 6 5 ms D S U U U D S U U D

Referring to Table 1, for each sub frame of the radio frame, ‘D’ represents a subframe for downlink transmission, ‘U’ represents a subframe for uplink transmission, and ‘S’ represents a special subframe constituted by three fields such as the DwPTS, the GP, and the UpPTS. The uplink-downlink configuration may be divided into 7 configurations and the positions and/or the numbers of the downlink subframe, the special subframe, and the uplink subframe may vary for each configuration.

A time when the downlink is switched to the uplink or a time when the uplink is switched to the downlink is referred to as a switching point. Switch-point periodicity means a period in which an aspect of the uplink subframe and the downlink subframe are switched is similarly repeated and both 5 ms or 10 ms are supported. When the period of the downlink-uplink switching point is 5 ms, the special subframe S is present for each half-frame and when the period of the downlink-uplink switching point is 5 ms, the special subframe S is present only in a first half-frame.

In all configurations, subframes #0 and #5 and the DwPTS are intervals only the downlink transmission. The UpPTS and a subframe just subsequently to the subframe are continuously intervals for the uplink transmission.

The uplink-downlink configuration may be known by both the base station and the terminal as system information. The base station transmits only an index of configuration information whenever the uplink-downlink configuration information is changed to announce a change of an uplink-downlink allocation state of the radio frame to the terminal. Further, the configuration information as a kind of downlink control information may be transmitted through a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) similarly to other scheduling information and may be commonly transmitted to all terminals in a cell through a broadcast channel as broadcasting information.

The structure of the radio frame is just one example and the number subcarriers included in the radio frame or the number of slots included in the subframe and the number of OFDM symbols included in the slot may be variously changed.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a resource grid for one downlink slot in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Referring to FIG. 2, one downlink slot includes the plurality of OFDM symbols in the time domain. Herein, it is exemplarily described that one downlink slot includes 7 OFDM symbols and one resource block includes 12 subcarriers in the frequency domain, but the present invention is not limited thereto.

Each element on the resource grid is referred to as a resource element and one resource block includes 12×7 resource elements. The number of resource blocks included in the downlink slot, NDL is subordinated to a downlink transmission bandwidth.

A structure of the uplink slot may be the same as that of the downlink slot.

FIG. 3 illustrates a structure of a downlink subframe in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Referring to FIG. 3, a maximum of three fore OFDM symbols in the first slot of the sub frame is a control region to which control channels are allocated and residual OFDM symbols is a data region to which a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) is allocated. Examples of the downlink control channel used in the 3GPP LTE include a Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH), a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), a Physical Hybrid-ARQ Indicator Channel (PHICH), and the like.

The PFCICH is transmitted in the first OFDM symbol of the subframe and transports information on the number (that is, the size of the control region) of OFDM symbols used for transmitting the control channels in the subframe. The PHICH which is a response channel to the uplink transports an Acknowledgement (ACK)/Not-Acknowledgement (NACK) signal for a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ). Control information transmitted through a PDCCH is referred to as downlink control information (DCI). The downlink control information includes uplink resource allocation information, downlink resource allocation information, or an uplink transmission (Tx) power control command for a predetermined terminal group.

The PDCCH may transport A resource allocation and transmission format (also referred to as a downlink grant) of a downlink shared channel (DL-SCH), resource allocation information (also referred to as an uplink grant) of an uplink shared channel (UL-SCH), paging information in a paging channel (PCH), system information in the DL-SCH, resource allocation for an upper-layer control message such as a random access response transmitted in the PDSCH, an aggregate of transmission power control commands for individual terminals in the predetermined terminal group, a voice over IP (VoIP). A plurality of PDCCHs may be transmitted in the control region and the terminal may monitor the plurality of PDCCHs. The PDCCH is constituted by one or an aggregate of a plurality of continuous control channel elements (CCEs). The CCE is a logical allocation wise used to provide a coding rate depending on a state of a radio channel to the PDCCH. The CCEs correspond to a plurality of resource element groups. A format of the PDCCH and a bit number of usable PDCCH are determined according to an association between the number of CCEs and the coding rate provided by the CCEs.

The base station determines the PDCCH format according to the DCI to be transmitted and attaches the control information to a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to the control information. The CRC is masked with a unique identifier (referred to as a radio network temporary identifier (RNTI)) according to an owner or a purpose of the PDCCH. In the case of a PDCCH for a specific terminal, the unique identifier of the terminal, for example, a cell-RNTI (C-RNTI) may be masked with the CRC. Alternatively, in the case of a PDCCH for the paging message, a paging indication identifier, for example, the CRC may be masked with a paging-RNTI (P-RNTI). In the case of a PDCCH for the system information, in more detail, a system information block (SIB), the CRC may be masked with a system information identifier, that is, a system information (SI)-RNTI. The CRC may be masked with a random access (RA)-RNTI in order to indicate the random access response which is a response to transmission of a random access preamble.

FIG. 4 illustrates a structure of an uplink subframe in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Referring to FIG. 4, the uplink subframe may be divided into the control region and the data region in a frequency domain. A physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) transporting uplink control information is allocated to the control region. A physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) transporting user data is allocated to the data region. One terminal does not simultaneously transmit the PUCCH and the PUSCH in order to maintain a single carrier characteristic.

A resource block (RB) pair in the subframe are allocated to the PUCCH for one terminal. RBs included in the RB pair occupy different subcarriers in two slots, respectively. The RB pair allocated to the PUCCH frequency-hops in a slot boundary.

Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH)

The uplink control information (UCI) transmitted through the PUCCH may include a scheduling request (SR), HARQ ACK/NACK information, and downlink channel measurement information.

The HARQ ACK/NACK information may be generated according to a downlink data packet on the PDSCH is successfully decoded. In the existing wireless communication system, 1 bit is transmitted as ACK/NACK information with respect to downlink single codeword transmission and 2 bits are transmitted as the ACK/NACK information with respect to downlink 2-codeword transmission.

The channel measurement information which designates feedback information associated with a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technique may include a channel quality indicator (CQI), a precoding matrix index (PMI), and a rank indicator (RI). The channel measurement information may also be collectively expressed as the CQI.

20 bits may be used per subframe for transmitting the CQI.

The PUCCH may be modulated by using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) techniques. Control information of a plurality of terminals may be transmitted through the PUCCH and when code division multiplexing (CDM) is performed to distinguish signals of the respective terminals, a constant amplitude zero autocorrelation (CAZAC) sequence having a length of 12 is primary used. Since the CAZAC sequence has a characteristic to maintain a predetermined amplitude in the time domain and the frequency domain, the CAZAC sequence has a property suitable for increasing coverage by decreasing a peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) or cubic metric (CM) of the terminal. Further, the ACK/NACK information for downlink data transmission performed through the PUCCH is covered by using an orthogonal sequence or an orthogonal cover (OC).

Further, the control information transmitted on the PUCCH may be distinguished by using a cyclically shifted sequence having different cyclic shift (CS) values. The cyclically shifted sequence may be generated by cyclically shifting a base sequence by a specific cyclic shift (CS) amount. The specific CS amount is indicated by the cyclic shift (CS) index. The number of usable cyclic shifts may vary depending on delay spread of the channel. Various types of sequences may be used as the base sequence the CAZAC sequence is one example of the corresponding sequence.

Further, the amount of control information which the terminal may transmit in one subframe may be determined according to the number (that is, SC-FDMA symbols other an SC-FDMA symbol used for transmitting a reference signal (RS) for coherent detection of the PUCCH) of SC-FDMA symbols which are usable for transmitting the control information.

In the 3GPP LTE system, the PUCCH is defined as a total of 7 different formats according to the transmitted control information, a modulation technique, the amount of control information, and the like and an attribute of the uplink control information (UCI) transmitted according to each PUCCH format may be summarized as shown in Table 2 given below.

TABLE 2 PUCCH Format Uplink Control Information(UCI) Format 1 Scheduling Request(SR)(unmodulated waveform) Format 1a 1-bit HARQ ACK/NACK with/without SR Format 1b 2-bit HARQ ACK/NACK with/without SR Format 2 CQI (20 coded bits) Format 2 CQI and 1- or 2-bit HARQ ACK/NACK (20 bits) for extended CP only Format 2a CQI and 1-bit HARQ ACK/NACK (20 + 1 coded bits) Format 2b CQI and 2-bit HARQ ACK/NACK (20 + 2 coded bits)

PUCCH format 1 is used for transmitting only the SR. A waveform which is not modulated is adopted in the case of transmitting only the SR and this will be described below in detail.

PUCCH format 1a or 1b is used for transmitting the HARQ ACK/NACK. PUCCH format 1a or 1b may be used when only the HARQ ACK/NACK is transmitted in a predetermined subframe. Alternatively, the HARQ ACK/NACK and the SR may be transmitted in the same subframe by using PUCCH format 1a or 1b.

PUCCH format 2 is used for transmitting the CQI and PUCCH format 2a or 2b is used for transmitting the CQI and the HARQ ACK/NACK.

In the case of an extended CP, PUCCH format 2 may be transmitted for transmitting the CQI and the HARQ ACK/NACK.

FIG. 5 illustrates one example of a type in which PUCCH formats are mapped to a PUCCH region of an uplink physical resource block in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

In FIG. 5, N_(RB) ^(UL) represents the number of resource blocks in the uplink and 0, 1, . . . , N_(RB) ^(UL)−1 mean numbers of physical resource blocks. Basically, the PUCCH is mapped to both edges of an uplink frequency block. As illustrated in FIG. 5, PUCCH format 2/2a/2b is mapped to a PUCCH region expressed as m=0, 1 and this may be expressed in such a manner that PUCCH format 2/2a/2b is mapped to resource blocks positioned at a band edge. Further, both PUCCH format 2/2a/2b and PUCCH format 1/1a/1b may be mixedly mapped to a PUCCH region expressed as m=2. Next, PUCCH format 1/1a/1b may be mapped to a PUCCH region expressed as m=3, 4, and 5. The number (N_(RB) ⁽²⁾) of PUCCH RBs which are usable by PUCCH format 2/2a/2b may be indicated to terminals in the cell by broadcasting signaling.

PUCCH format 2/2a/2b is described. PUCCH format 2/2a/2b is a control channel for transmitting channel measurement feedback (CQI, PMI, and RI).

A reporting period of the channel measurement feedbacks (hereinafter, collectively expressed as CQI information) and a frequency wise (alternatively, a frequency resolution) to be measured may be controlled by the base station. In the time domain, periodic and aperiodic CQI reporting may be supported. PUCCH format 2 may be used for only the periodic reporting and the PUSCH may be used for aperiodic reporting. In the case of the aperiodic reporting, the base station may instruct the terminal to transmit a scheduling resource loaded with individual CQI reporting for the uplink data transmission.

FIG. 6 illustrates a structure of a CQI channel in the case of a general CP in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

In SC-FDMA symbols 0 to 6 of one slot, SC-FDMA symbols 1 and 5 (second and sixth symbols) may be used for transmitting a demodulation reference signal and the CQI information may be transmitted in the residual SC-FDMA symbols. Meanwhile, in the case of the extended CP, one SC-FDMA symbol (SC-FDMA symbol 3) is used for transmitting the DMRS.

In PUCCH format 2/2a/2b, modulation by the CAZAC sequence is supported and the CAZAC sequence having the length of 12 is multiplied by a QPSK-modulated symbol. The cyclic shift (CS) of the sequence is changed between the symbol and the slot. The orthogonal covering is used with respect to the DMRS.

The reference signal (DMRS) is loaded on two SC-FDMA symbols separated from each other by 3 SC-FDMA symbols among 7 SC-FDMA symbols included in one slot and the CQI information is loaded on 5 residual SC-FDMA symbols. Two RSs are used in one slot in order to support a high-speed terminal. Further, the respective terminals are distinguished by using the CS sequence. CQI information symbols are modulated and transferred to all SC-FDMA symbols and the SC-FDMA symbol is constituted by one sequence. That is, the terminal modulates and transmits the CQI to each sequence.

The number of symbols which may be transmitted to one TTI is 10 and modulation of the CQI information is determined up to QPSK. When QPSK mapping is used for the SC-FDMA symbol, since a CQI value of 2 bits may be loaded, a CQI value of 10 bits may be loaded on one slot. Therefore, a CQI value of a maximum of 20 bits may be loaded on one subframe. A frequency domain spread code is used for spreading the CQI information in the frequency domain.

The CAZAC sequence (for example, ZC sequence) having the length of 12 may be used as the frequency domain spread code. CAZAC sequences having different CS values may be applied to the respective control channels to be distinguished from each other. IFFT is performed with respect to the CQI information in which the frequency domain is spread.

12 different terminals may be orthogonally multiplexed on the same PUCCH RB by a cyclic shift having 12 equivalent intervals. In the case of a general CP, a DMRS sequence on SC-FDMA symbol 1 and 5 (on SC-FDMA symbol 3 in the case of the extended CP) is similar to a CQI signal sequence on the frequency domain, but the modulation of the CQI information is not adopted.

The terminal may be semi-statically configured by upper-layer signaling so as to periodically report different CQI, PMI, and RI types on PUCCH resources indicated as PUCCH resource indexes (n_(PUCCH) ^((1,{tilde over (p)})), n_(PUCCH) ^((2,{tilde over (p)})), and n_(PUCCH) ^((3,{tilde over (p)}))). Herein, the PUCCH resource index (n_(PUCCH) ^((2,{tilde over (p)}))) is information indicating the PUCCH region used for PUCCH format 2/2a/2b and a CS value to be used.

PUCCH Channel Structure

PUCCH formats 1a and 1b are described.

In PUCCH format 1a and 1b, the CAZAC sequence having the length of 12 is multiplied by a symbol modulated by using a BPSK or QPSK modulation scheme. For example, a result acquired by multiplying a modulated symbol d(0) by a CAZAC sequence r(n) (n=0, 1, 2, . . . , N−1) having a length of N becomes y(0), y(1), y(2), . . . , y(N−1). y(0), . . . , y(N−1) symbols may be designated as a block of symbols. The modulated symbol is multiplied by the CAZAC sequence and thereafter, the block-wise spread using the orthogonal sequence is adopted.

A Hadamard sequence having a length of 4 is used with respect to general ACK/NACK information and a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) sequence having a length of 3 is used with respect to the ACK/NACK information and the reference signal.

The Hadamard sequence having the length of 2 is used with respect to the reference signal in the case of the extended CP.

FIG. 7 illustrates a structure of an ACK/NACK channel in the case of a general CP in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

In FIG. 7, a PUCCH channel structure for transmitting the HARQ ACK/NACK without the CQI is exemplarily illustrated.

The reference signal (DMRS) is loaded on three consecutive SC-FDMA symbols in a middle part among 7 SC-FDMA symbols and the ACK/NACK signal is loaded on 4 residual SC-FDMA symbols.

Meanwhile, in the case of the extended CP, the RS may be loaded on two consecutive symbols in the middle part. The number of and the positions of symbols used in the RS may vary depending on the control channel and the numbers and the positions of symbols used in the ACK/NACK signal associated with the positions of symbols used in the RS may also correspondingly vary depending on the control channel.

Acknowledgment response information (not scrambled status) of 1 bit and 2 bits may be expressed as one HARQ ACK/NACK modulated symbol by using the BPSK and QPSK modulation techniques, respectively. A positive acknowledgement response (ACK) may be encoded as ‘1’ and a negative acknowledgment response (NACK) may be encoded as ‘0’.

When a control signal is transmitted in an allocated band, 2-dimensional (D) spread is adopted in order to increase a multiplexing capacity. That is, frequency domain spread and time domain spread are simultaneously adopted in order to increase the number of terminals or control channels which may be multiplexed.

A frequency domain sequence is used as the base sequence in order to spread the ACK/NACK signal in the frequency domain. A Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequence which is one of the CAZAC sequences may be used as the frequency domain sequence. For example, different CSs are applied to the ZC sequence which is the base sequence, and as a result, multiplexing different terminals or different control channels may be applied. The number of CS resources supported in an SC-FDMA symbol for PUCCH RBs for HARQ ACK/NACK transmission is set by a cell-specific upper-layer signaling parameter (Δ_(shift) ^(PUCCH)).

The ACK/NACK signal which is frequency-domain spread is spread in the time domain by using an orthogonal spreading code. As the orthogonal spreading code, a Walsh-Hadamard sequence or DFT sequence may be used. For example, the ACK/NACK signal may be spread by using an orthogonal sequence (w0, w1, w2, and w3) having the length of 4 with respect to 4 symbols. Further, the RS is also spread through an orthogonal sequence having the length of 3 or 2. This is referred to as orthogonal covering (OC).

Multiple terminals may be multiplexed by a code division multiplexing (CDM) scheme by using the CS resources in the frequency domain and the OC resources in the time domain described above. That is, ACK/NACK information and RSs of a lot of terminals may be multiplexed on the same PUCCH RB.

In respect to the time-domain spread CDM, the number of spreading codes supported with respect to the ACK/NACK information is limited by the number of RS symbols. That is, since the number of RS transmitting SC-FDMA symbols is smaller than that of ACK/NACK information transmitting SC-FDMA symbols, the multiplexing capacity of the RS is smaller than that of the ACK/NACK information.

For example, in the case of the general CP, the ACK/NACK information may be transmitted in four symbols and not 4 but 3 orthogonal spreading codes are used for the ACK/NACK information and the reason is that the number of RS transmitting symbols is limited to 3 to use only 3 orthogonal spreading codes for the RS.

In the case of the subframe of the general CP, when 3 symbols are used for transmitting the RS and 4 symbols are used for transmitting the ACK/NACK information in one slot, for example, if 6 CSs in the frequency domain and 3 orthogonal cover (OC) resources may be used, HARQ acknowledgement responses from a total of 18 different terminals may be multiplexed in one PUCCH RB. In the case of the subframe of the extended CP, when 2 symbols are used for transmitting the RS and 4 symbols are used for transmitting the ACK/NACK information in one slot, for example, if 6 CSs in the frequency domain and 2 orthogonal cover (OC) resources may be used, the HARQ acknowledgement responses from a total of 12 different terminals may be multiplexed in one PUCCH RB.

Next, PUCCH format 1 is described. The scheduling request (SR) is transmitted by a scheme in which the terminal requests scheduling or does not request the scheduling. An SR channel reuses an ACK/NACK channel structure in PUCCH format 1a/1b and is configured by an on-off keying (OOK) scheme based on an ACK/NACK channel design. In the SR channel, the reference signal is not transmitted. Therefore, in the case of the general CP, a sequence having a length of 7 is used and in the case of the extended CP, a sequence having a length of 6 is used. Different cyclic shifts (CSs) or orthogonal covers (OCs) may be allocated to the SR and the ACK/NACK. That is, the terminal transmits the HARQ ACK/NACK through a resource allocated for the SR in order to transmit a positive SR. The terminal transmits the HARQ ACK/NACK through a resource allocated for the ACK/NACK in order to transmit a negative SR.

Next, an enhanced-PUCCH (e-PUCCH) format is described. An e-PUCCH may correspond to PUCCH format 3 of an LTE-A system. A block spreading technique may be applied to ACK/NACK transmission using PUCCH format 3.

The block spreading technique is a scheme that modulates transmission of the control signal by using the SC-FDMA scheme unlike the existing PUCCH format 1 series or 2 series. As illustrated in FIG. 8, a symbol sequence may be spread and transmitted on the time domain by using an orthogonal cover code (OCC). The control signals of the plurality of terminals may be multiplexed on the same RB by using the OCC. In the case of PUCCH format 2 described above, one symbol sequence is transmitted throughout the time domain and the control signals of the plurality of terminals are multiplexed by using the cyclic shift (CS) of the CAZAC sequence, while in the case of a block spreading based on PUCCH format (for example, PUCCH format 3), one symbol sequence is transmitted throughout the frequency domain and the control signals of the plurality of terminals are multiplexed by using the time domain spreading using the OCC.

FIG. 8 illustrates one example of generating and transmitting 5 SC-FDMA symbols during one slot in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

In FIG. 8, an example of generating and transmitting 5 SC-FDMA symbols (that is, data part) by using an OCC having the length of 5 (alternatively, SF=5) in one symbol sequence during one slot. In this case, two RS symbols may be used during one slot.

In the example of FIG. 8, the RS symbol may be generated from a CAZAC sequence to which a specific cyclic shift value is applied and transmitted in a type in which a predetermined OCC is applied (alternatively, multiplied) throughout a plurality of RS symbols. Further, in the example of FIG. 8, when it is assumed that 12 modulated symbols are used for each OFDM symbol (alternatively, SC-FDMA symbol) and the respective modulated symbols are generated by QPSK, the maximum bit number which may be transmitted in one slot becomes 24 bits (=12×2). Accordingly, the bit number which is transmittable by two slots becomes a total of 48 bits. When a PUCCH channel structure of the block spreading scheme is used, control information having an extended size may be transmitted as compared with the existing PUCCH format 1 series and 2 series.

General Carrier Aggregation

A communication environment considered in embodiments of the present invention includes multi-carrier supporting environments. That is, a multi-carrier system or a carrier aggregation system used in the present invention means a system that aggregates and uses one or more component carriers (CCs) having a smaller bandwidth smaller than a target band at the time of configuring a target wideband in order to support a wideband.

In the present invention, multi-carriers mean aggregation of (alternatively, carrier aggregation) of carriers and in this case, the aggregation of the carriers means both aggregation between continuous carriers and aggregation between non-contiguous carriers. Further, the number of component carriers aggregated between the downlink and the uplink may be differently set. A case in which the number of downlink component carriers (hereinafter, referred to as ‘DL CC’) and the number of uplink component carriers (hereinafter, referred to as ‘UL CC’) are the same as each other is referred to as symmetric aggregation and a case in which the number of downlink component carriers and the number of uplink component carriers are different from each other is referred to as asymmetric aggregation. The carrier aggregation may be used mixedly with a term such as the carrier aggregation, the bandwidth aggregation, spectrum aggregation, or the like.

The carrier aggregation configured by combining two or more component carriers aims at supporting up to a bandwidth of 100 MHz in the LTE-A system. When one or more carriers having the bandwidth than the target band are combined, the bandwidth of the carriers to be combined may be limited to a bandwidth used in the existing system in order to maintain backward compatibility with the existing IMT system. For example, the existing 3GPP LTE system supports bandwidths of 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz and a 3GPP LTE-advanced system (that is, LTE-A) may be configured to support a bandwidth larger than 20 MHz by using on the bandwidth for compatibility with the existing system. Further, the carrier aggregation system used in the preset invention may be configured to support the carrier aggregation by defining a new bandwidth regardless of the bandwidth used in the existing system.

The LTE-A system uses a concept of the cell in order to manage a radio resource.

The carrier aggregation environment may be called a multi-cell environment. The cell is defined as a combination of a pair of a downlink resource (DL CC) and an uplink resource (UL CC), but the uplink resource is not required. Therefore, the cell may be constituted by only the downlink resource or both the downlink resource and the uplink resource. When a specific terminal has only one configured serving cell, the cell may have one DL CC and one UL CC, but when the specific terminal has two or more configured serving cells, the cell has DL CCs as many as the cells and the number of UL CCs may be equal to or smaller than the number of DL CCs.

Alternatively, contrary to this, the DL CC and the UL CC may be configured. That is, when the specific terminal has multiple configured serving cells, a carrier aggregation environment having UL CCs more than DL CCs may also be supported. That is, the carrier aggregation may be appreciated as aggregation of two or more cells having different carrier frequencies (center frequencies). Herein, the described ‘cell’ needs to be distinguished from a cell as an area covered by the base station which is generally used.

The cell used in the LTE-A system includes a primary cell (PCell) and a secondary cell (SCell. The P cell and the S cell may be used as the serving cell. In a terminal which is in an RRC_CONNECTED state, but does not have the configured carrier aggregation or does not support the carrier aggregation, only one serving constituted by only the P cell is present. On the contrary, in a terminal which is in the RRC_CONNECTED state and has the configured carrier aggregation, one or more serving cells may be present and the P cell and one or more S cells are included in all serving cells.

The serving cell (P cell and S cell) may be configured through an RRC parameter. PhysCellId as a physical layer identifier of the cell has integer values of 0 to 503. SCellIndex as a short identifier used to identify the S cell has integer values of 1 to 7. ServCellIndex as a short identifier used to identify the serving cell (P cell or S cell) has the integer values of 0 to 7. The value of 0 is applied to the P cell and SCellIndex is previously granted for application to the S cell. That is, a cell having a smallest cell ID (alternatively, cell index) in ServCellIndex becomes the P cell.

The P cell means a cell that operates on a primary frequency (alternatively, primary CC). The terminal may be used to perform an initial connection establishment process or a connection re-establishment process and may be designated as a cell indicated during a handover process. Further, the P cell means a cell which becomes the center of control associated communication among serving cells configured in the carrier aggregation environment. That is, the terminal may be allocated with and transmit the PUCCH only in the P cell thereof and use only the P cell to acquire the system information or change a monitoring procedure. An evolved universal terrestrial radio access (E-UTRAN) may change only the P cell for the handover procedure to the terminal supporting the carrier aggregation environment by using an RRC connection reconfiguration message (RRCConnectionReconfigutaion) message of an upper layer including mobile control information (mobilityControlInfo).

The S cell means a cell that operates on a secondary frequency (alternatively, secondary CC). Only one P cell may be allocated to a specific terminal and one or more S cells may be allocated to the specific terminal. The S cell may be configured after RRC connection establishment is achieved and used for providing an additional radio resource. The PUCCH is not present in residual cells other than the P cell, that is, the S cells among the serving cells configured in the carrier aggregation environment. The E-UTRAN may provide all system information associated with a related cell which is in an RRC_CONNECTED state through a dedicated signal at the time of adding the S cells to the terminal that supports the carrier aggregation environment. A change of the system information may be controlled by releasing and adding the related S cell and in this case, the RRC connection reconfiguration (RRCConnectionReconfigutaion) message of the upper layer may be used. The E-UTRAN may perform having different parameters for each terminal rather than broadcasting in the related S cell.

After an initial security activation process starts, the E-UTRAN adds the S cells to the P cell initially configured during the connection establishment process to configure a network including one or more S cells. In the carrier aggregation environment, the P cell and the S cell may operate as the respective component carriers. In an embodiment described below, the primary component carrier (PCC) may be used as the same meaning as the P cell and the secondary component carrier (SCC) may be used as the same meaning as the S cell.

FIG. 9 illustrates examples of a component carrier and carrier aggregation in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

FIG. 9a illustrates a single carrier structure used in an LTE system. The component carrier includes the DL CC and the UL CC. One component carrier may have a frequency range of 20 MHz.

FIG. 9b illustrates a carrier aggregation structure used in the LTE system. In the case of FIG. 9b , a case is illustrated, in which three component carriers having a frequency magnitude of 20 MHz are combined. Each of three DL CCs and three UL CCs is provided, but the number of DL CCs and the number of UL CCs are not limited. In the case of carrier aggregation, the terminal may simultaneously monitor three CCs, and receive downlink signal/data and transmit uplink signal/data.

When N DL CCs are managed in a specific cell, the network may allocate M (M≦N) DL CCs to the terminal. In this case, the terminal may monitor only M limited DL CCs and receive the DL signal. Further, the network gives L (L≦M≦N) DL CCs to allocate a primary DL CC to the terminal and in this case, UE needs to particularly monitor L DL CCs. Such a scheme may be similarly applied even to uplink transmission.

A linkage between a carrier frequency (alternatively, DL CC) of the downlink resource and a carrier frequency (alternatively, UL CC) of the uplink resource may be indicated by an upper-layer message such as the RRC message or the system information. For example, a combination of the DL resource and the UL resource may be configured by a linkage defined by system information block type 2 (SIB2). In detail, the linkage may mean a mapping relationship between the DL CC in which the PDCCH transporting a UL grant and a UL CC using the UL grant and mean a mapping relationship between the DL CC (alternatively, UL CC) in which data for the HARQ is transmitted and the UL CC (alternatively, DL CC) in which the HARQ ACK/NACK signal is transmitted.

Cross Carrier Scheduling

In the carrier aggregation system, in terms of scheduling for the carrier or the serving cell, two types of a self-scheduling method and a cross carrier scheduling method are provided. The cross carrier scheduling may be called cross component carrier scheduling or cross cell scheduling.

The cross carrier scheduling means transmitting the PDCCH (DL grant) and the PDSCH to different respective DL CCs or transmitting the PUSCH transmitted according to the PDCCH (UL grant) transmitted in the DL CC through other UL CC other than a UL CC linked with the DL CC receiving the UL grant.

Whether to perform the cross carrier scheduling may be UE-specifically activated or deactivated and semi-statically known for each terminal through the upper-layer signaling (for example, RRC signaling).

When the cross carrier scheduling is activated, a carrier indicator field (CIF) indicating through which DL/UL CC the PDSCH/PUSCH the PDSCH/PUSCH indicated by the corresponding PDCCH is transmitted is required. For example, the PDCCH may allocate the PDSCH resource or the PUSCH resource to one of multiple component carriers by using the CIF. That is, the CIF is set when the PDSCH or PUSCH resource is allocated to one of DL/UL CCs in which the PDCCH on the DL CC is multiply aggregated. In this case, a DCI format of LTE-A Release-8 may extend according to the CIF. In this case, the set CIF may be fixed to a 3-bit field and the position of the set CIF may be fixed regardless of the size of the DCI format. Further, a PDCCH structure (the same coding and the same CCE based resource mapping) of the LTE-A Release-8 may be reused.

On the contrary, when the PDCCH on the DL CC allocates the PDSCH resource on the same DL CC or allocates the PUSCH resource on a UL CC which is singly linked, the CIF is not set. In this case, the same PDCCH structure (the same coding and the same CCE based resource mapping) and DCI format as the LTE-A Release-8 may be used.

When the cross carrier scheduling is possible, the terminal needs to monitor PDCCHs for a plurality of DCIs in a control region of a monitoring CC according to a transmission mode and/or a bandwidth for each CC. Therefore, a configuration and PDCCH monitoring of a search space which may support monitoring the PDCCHs for the plurality of DCIs are required.

In the carrier aggregation system, a terminal DL CC aggregate represents an aggregate of DL CCs in which the terminal is scheduled to receive the PDSCH and a terminal UL CC aggregate represents an aggregate of UL CCs in which the terminal is scheduled to transmit the PUSCH. Further, a PDCCH monitoring set represents a set of one or more DL CCs that perform the PDCCH monitoring. The PDCCH monitoring set may be the same as the terminal DL CC set or a subset of the terminal DL CC set. The PDCCH monitoring set may include at least any one of DL CCs in the terminal DL CC set. Alternatively, the PDCCH monitoring set may be defined separately regardless of the terminal DL CC set. The DL CCs included in the PDCCH monitoring set may be configured in such a manner that self-scheduling for the linked UL CC is continuously available. The terminal DL CC set, the terminal UL CC set, and the PDCCH monitoring set may be configured UE-specifically, UE group-specifically, or cell-specifically.

When the cross carrier scheduling is deactivated, the deactivation of the cross carrier scheduling means that the PDCCH monitoring set continuously means the terminal DL CC set and in this case, an indication such as separate signaling for the PDCCH monitoring set is not required. However, when the cross carrier scheduling is activated, the PDCCH monitoring set is preferably defined in the terminal DL CC set. That is, the base station transmits the PDCCH through only the PDCCH monitoring set in order to schedule the PDSCH or PUSCH for the terminal.

FIG. 10 illustrates one example of a subframe structure depending on cross carrier scheduling in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Referring to FIG. 10, a case is illustrated, in which three DL CCs are associated with a DL subframe for an LTE-A terminal and DL CC ‘A’ is configured as a PDCCH monitoring DL CC. When the CIF is not used, each DL CC may transmit the PDCCH scheduling the PDSCH thereof without the CIF. On the contrary, when the CIF is used through the upper-layer signaling, only one DL CC ‘A’ may transmit the PDCCH scheduling the PDSCH thereof or the PDSCH of another CC by using the CIF. In this case, DL CC ‘B’ and ‘C’ in which the PDCCH monitoring DL CC is not configured does not transmit the PDCCH.

General ACK/NACK Multiplexing Method

In a situation in which the terminal simultaneously needs to transmit multiple ACKs/NACKs corresponding to multiple data units received from an eNB, an ACK/NACK mulplexign method based on PUCCH resource selection may be considered in order to maintain a single-frequency characteristic of the ACK/NACK signal and reduce ACK/NACK transmission power.

Together with ACK/NACK multiplexing, contents of ACK/NACK responses for multiple data units may be identified by combining a PUCCH resource and a resource of QPSK modulation symbols used for actual ACK/NACK transmission.

For example, when one PUCCH resource may transmit 4 bits and four data units may be maximally transmitted, an ACK/NACK result may be identified in the eNB as shown in Table 3 given below.

TABLE 3 HARQ-ACK(0), HARQ-ACK(1), HARQ-ACK(2), HARQ-ACK(3) n_(PUCCH) ⁽¹⁾ b(0), b(1) ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK n_(PUCCH, 1) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 1 ACK, ACK, ACK, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 1) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 0 NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, NACK, DTX n_(PUCCH, 2) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 1 ACK, ACK, NACK/DTX, ACK n_(PUCCH, 1) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 0 NACK, DTX, DTX, DTX n_(PUCCH, 0) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 0 ACK, ACK, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 1) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 0 ACK, NACK/DTX, ACK, ACK n_(PUCCH, 3) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 1 NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, NACK n_(PUCCH, 3) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 1 ACK, NACK/DTX, ACK, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 2) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 1 ACK, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, ACK n_(PUCCH, 0) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 1 ACK, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 0) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 1 NACK/DTX, ACK, ACK, ACK n_(PUCCH, 3) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 1 NACK/DTX, NACK, DTX, DTX n_(PUCCH, 1) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 0 NACK/DTX, ACK, ACK, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 2) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 0 NACK/DTX, ACK, NACK/DTX, ACK n_(PUCCH, 3) ⁽¹⁾ 1, 0 NACK/DTX, ACK, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 1) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 1 NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, ACK, ACK n_(PUCCH, 3) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 1 NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, ACK, NACK/DTX n_(PUCCH, 2) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 0 NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, NACK/DTX, ACK n_(PUCCH, 3) ⁽¹⁾ 0, 0 DTX, DTX, DTX, DTX N/A N/A

In Table 3 given above, HARQ-ACK(i) represents an ACK/NACK result for an i-th data unit. In Table 3 given above, discontinuous transmission (DTX) means that there is no data unit to be transmitted for the corresponding HARQ-ACK(i) or that the terminal may not detect the data unit corresponding to the HARQ-ACK(i).

According to Table 3 given above, a maximum of four PUCCH resources (n_(PUCCH,0) ⁽¹⁾, n_(PUCCH,1) ⁽¹⁾, n_(PUCCH,2) ⁽¹⁾, and n_(PUCCH,3) ⁽¹⁾) are provided and b(0) and b(1) are two bits transmitted by using a selected PUCCH.

For example, when the terminal successfully receives all of four data units, the terminal transmits 2 bits (1,1) by using n_(PUCCH,1) ⁽¹⁾.

When the terminal fails to decoding in first and third data units and succeeds in decoding in second and fourth data units, the terminal transmits bits (1,0) by using n_(PUCCH,3) ⁽¹⁾.

In ACK/NACK channel selection, when there is at least one ACK, the NACK and the DTX are coupled with each other. The reason is that a combination of the PUCCH resource and the QPSK symbol may not all ACK/NACK states. However, when there is no ACK, the DTX is decoupled from the NACK.

In this case, the PUCCH resource linked to the data unit corresponding to one definite NACK may also be reserved to transmit signals of multiple ACKs/NACKs.

Validation of PDCCH for Semi-Persistent Scheduling

Semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) is a scheduling scheme that allocates the resource to the terminal to be persistently maintained during a specific time interval.

When a predetermined amount of data is transmitted for a specific time like a voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), since the control information need not be transmitted every data transmission interval for the resource allocation, the waste of the control information may be reduced by using the SPS scheme. In a so-called semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) method, a time resource domain in which the resource may be allocated to the terminal is preferentially allocated.

In this case, in a semi-persistent allocation method, a time resource domain allocated to a specific terminal may be configured to have periodicity. Then, a frequency resource domain is allocated as necessary to complete allocation of the time-frequency resource. Allocating the frequency resource domain may be designated as so-called activation. When the semi-persistent allocation method is used, since the resource allocation is maintained during a predetermined period by one-time signaling, the resource need not be repeatedly allocated, and as a result, signaling overhead may be reduced.

Thereafter, since the resource allocation to the terminal is not required, signaling for releasing the frequency resource allocation may be transmitted from the base station to the terminal. Releasing the allocation of the frequency resource domain may be designated as deactivation.

In current LTE, in which subframes the SPS is first transmitted/received through radio resource control (RRC) signaling for the SPS for the uplink and/or downlink is announced to the terminal. That is, the time resource is preferentially designated among the time and frequency resources allocated for the SPS through the RRC signaling. In order to announce a usable subframe, for example, a period and an offset of the subframe may be announced. However, since the terminal is allocated with only the time resource domain through the RRC signaling, even though the terminal receives the RRC signaling, the terminal does not immediately perform transmission and reception by the SPS and the terminal allocates the frequency resource domain as necessary to complete the allocation of the time-frequency resource. Allocating the frequency resource domain may be designated as deactivation and releasing the allocation of the frequency resource domain may be designated as deactivation.

Therefore, the terminal receives the PDCCH indicating the activation and thereafter, allocate the frequency resource according to RB allocation information included in the received PDCCH and applies modulation and code rate depending on modulation and coding scheme (MCS) information to start transmission and reception according to the period and the offset of the subframe allocated through the RRC signaling.

Next, when the terminal receives the PDCCH announcing the deactivation from the base station, the terminal stops transmission and reception. When the terminal receives the PDCCH indicating the activation or reactivation after stopping the transmission and reception, the terminal resumes the transmission and reception again with the period and the offset of the subframe allocated through the RRC signaling by using the RC allocation, the MCS, and the like designated by the PDCCH. That is, the time resource is performed through the RRC signaling, but the signal may be actually transmitted and received after receiving the PDCCH indicating the activation and reactivation of the SPS and the signal transmission and reception stop after receiving the PDCCH indicating the deactivation of the SPS.

When all conditions described below are satisfied, the terminal may validate a PDCCH including an SPS indication. First, a CRC parity bit added for a PDCCH payload needs to be scrambled with an SPS C-RNTI and second, a new data indicator (NDI) field needs to be set to 0. Herein, in the case of DCI formats 2, 2A, 2B, and 2C, the new data indicator field indicates one activated transmission block.

In addition, when each field used in the DCI format is set according to Tables 4 and 5 given below, the validation is completed. When the validation is completed, the terminal recognizes that received DCI information is valid SPS activation or deactivation (alternatively, release). On the contrary, when the validation is not completed, the terminal recognizes that a non-matching CRC is included in the received DCI format.

Table 4 shows a field for validating the PDCCH indicating the SPS activation.

TABLE 4 DCI format DCI format DCI format 0 1/1A 2/2A/2B TPC command for set to ‘00’ N/A N/A scheduled PUSCH Cyclic shift DM RS set to ‘000’ N/A N/A Modulation and MSB is set N/A N/A coding scheme to ‘0’ and redundancy version HARQ process N/A FDD: set to ‘000’ FDD: set to ‘000’ number TDD: set to ‘0000’ TDD: set to ‘0000’ Modulation and N/A MSB is For the enabled coding scheme set to ‘0’ transport block: MSB is set to ‘0’ Redundancy N/A set to ‘0’ For the enabled version transport block: set to ‘00’

Table 5 shows a field for validating the PDCCH indicating the SPS deactivation (alternatively, release).

TABLE 5 DCI format 0 DCI format 1A TPC command for set to ‘00’ N/A scheduled PUSCH Cyclic shift DM RS set to ‘000’ N/A Modulation and coding set to ‘11111’ N/A scheme and redundancy version Resource block assignment Set to all ‘1’s N/A and hopping resource allocation HARQ process number N/A FDD: set to ‘000’ TDD: set to ‘0000’ Modulation and coding N/A set to ‘11111’ scheme Redundancy version N/A set to ‘00’ Resource block assignment N/A Set to all ‘1’s

When the DCI format indicates SPS downlink scheduling activation, a TPC command value for the PUCCH field may be used as indexes indicating four PUCCH resource values set by the upper layer.

PUCCH Piggybacking in Rel-8 LTE

FIG. 11 illustrates one example of transport channel processing of a UL-SCH in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

In a 3GPP LTE system (=E-UTRA, Rel. 8), in the case of the UL, single carrier transmission having an excellent peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) or cubic metric (CM) characteristic which influences the performance of a power amplifier is maintained for efficient utilization of the power amplifier of the terminal. That is, in the case of transmitting the PUSCH of the existing LTE system, data to be transmitted may maintain the single carrier characteristic through DFT-precoding and in the case of transmitting the PUCCH, information is transmitted while being loaded on a sequence having the single carrier characteristic to maintain the single carrier characteristic. However, when the data to be DFT-precoded is non-contiguously allocated to a frequency axis or the PUSCH and the PUCCH are simultaneously transmitted, the single carrier characteristic deteriorates. Therefore, when the PUSCH is transmitted in the same subframe as the transmission of the PUCCH as illustrated in FIG. 11, uplink control information (UCI) to be transmitted to the PUCCH is transmitted (piggyback) together with data through the PUSCH.

Since the PUCCH and the PUSCH may not be simultaneously transmitted as described above, the existing LTE terminal uses a method that multiplexes uplink control information (UCI) (CQI/PMI, HARQ-ACK, RI, and the like) to the PUSCH region in a subframe in which the PUSCH is transmitted.

As one example, when the channel quality indicator (CQI) and/or precoding matrix indicator (PMI) needs to be transmitted in a subframe allocated to transmit the PUSCH, UL-SCH data and the CQI/PMI are multiplexed after DFT-spreading to transmit both control information and data. In this case, the UL-SCH data is rate-matched by considering a CQI/PMI resource. Further, a scheme is used, in which the control information such as the HARQ ACK, the RI, and the like punctures the UL-SCH data to be multiplexed to the PUSCH region.

FIG. 12 illustrates one example of a signal processing process of an uplink share channel of a transport channel in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Herein, the signal processing process of the uplink share channel (hereinafter, referred to as “UL-SCH”) may be applied to one or more transport channels or control information types.

Referring to FIG. 12, the UL-SCH transfers data to a coding unit in the form of a transport block (TB) once every a transmission time interval (TTI).

A CRC parity bit p₀, p₁, p₂, p₃, . . . , p_(L-1) is attached to a bit of the transport block received from the upper layer (S120). In this case, A represents the size of the transport block and L represents the number of parity bits. Input bits to which the CRC is attached are shown in b₀, b₁, b₂, b₃, . . . , b_(B-1). In this case, B represents the number of bits of the transport block including the CRC.

b₀, b₁, b₂, b₃, . . . , b_(B-1) is segmented into multiple code blocks (CBs) according to the size of the TB and the CRC is attached to multiple segmented CBs (S121). Bits after the code block segmentation and the CRC attachment are shown in c_(r0), c_(r1), c_(r2), c_(r3), . . . , c_(r)(K_(r)−1) Herein, r represents No. (r=0, . . . , C−1) of the code block and Kr represents the bit number depending on the code block r. Further, C represents the total number of code blocks.

Subsequently, channel coding is performed (S122). Output bits after the channel coding are shown in d_(r0) ^((i)), d_(r1) ^((i)), d_(r2) ^((i)), d_(r3) ^((i)), . . . , d_(r(D) _(r) ⁻¹⁾ ^((i)). In this case, i represents an encoded stream index and may have a value of 0, 1, or 2. Dr represents the number of bits of the i-th encoded stream for the code block r. r represents the code block number (r=0, . . . , C−1) and C represents the total number of code blocks. Each code block may be encoded by turbo coding.

Subsequently, rate matching is performed (S123). Bits after the rate matching are shown in e_(r0), e_(r1), e_(r2), e_(r3), . . . , e_(r(E) _(r) ⁻¹⁾ In this case, r represents the code block number (r=0, . . . , C−1) and C represents the total number of code blocks. Er represents the number of rate-matched bits of the r-th code block.

Subsequently, concatenation among the code blocks is performed again (S124). Bits after the concatenation of the code blocks is performed are shown in f₀, f₁, f₂, f₃, . . . , f_(G-1). In this case, G represents the total number of bits encoded for transmission and when the control information is multiplexed with the UL-SCH, the number of bits used for transmitting the control information is not included.

Meanwhile, when the control information is transmitted in the PUSCH, channel coding of the CQI/PMI, the RI, and the ACK/NACK which are the control information is independently performed (S126, S127, and S128). Since different encoded symbols are allocated for transmitting each control information, the respective control information has different coding rates.

In time division duplex (TDD), as an ACK/NACK feedback mode, two modes of ACK/NACK bundling and ACK/NACK multiplexing are supported by an upper-layer configuration. ACK/NACK information bits for the ACK/NACK bundling are constituted by 1 bit or 2 bits and ACK/NACK information bits for the ACK/NACK multiplexing are constituted by 1 to 4 bits.

After the concatenation among the code blocks in step S134, encoded bits f₀, f₁, f₂, f₃, . . . , f_(G-1) of the UL-SCH data and encoded bits q₀, q₁, q₂, q₃, . . . , q_(N) _(L) _(·Q) _(CQI) ⁻¹ of the CQI/PMI are multiplexed (S125). A multiplexed result of the data and the CQI/PMI is shown in to g ₀, g ₁, g ₂, g ₃, . . . , g _(H′-1). In this case, g _(i) (i=0, . . . , H′−1) represents a column vector having a length of (Q_(m)·N_(L)). H=(G+N_(L)·Q_(CQI)) and H′=H/(N_(L)·Q_(m)). N_(L) represents the number of layers mapped to a UL-SCH transport block and H represents the total number of encoded bits allocated to N_(L) transport layers mapped with the transport block for the UL-SCH data and the CQI/PMI information.

Subsequently, the multiplexed data and CQI/PMI, a channel encoded RI, and the ACK/NACK are channel-interleaved to generate an output signal (S129).

Reference Signal (RS)

In the wireless communication system, since the data is transmitted through the radio channel, the signal may be distorted during transmission. In order for the receiver side to accurately receive the distorted signal, the distortion of the received signal needs to be corrected by using channel information. In order to detect the channel information, a signal transmitting method know by both the transmitter side and the receiver side and a method for detecting the channel information by using an distortion degree when the signal is transmitted through the channel are primarily used. The aforementioned signal is referred to as a pilot signal or a reference signal (RS).

When the data is transmitted and received by using the MIMO antenna, a channel state between the transmitting antenna and the receiving antenna need to be detected in order to accurately receive the signal. Therefore, the respective transmitting antennas need to have individual reference signals.

The downlink reference signal includes a common RS (CRS) shared by all terminals in one cell and a dedicated RS (DRS) for a specific terminal. Information for demodulation and channel measurement may be provided by using the reference signals.

The receiver side (that is, terminal) measures the channel state from the CRS and feeds back the indicators associated with the channel quality, such as the channel quality indicator (CQI), the precoding matrix index (PMI), and/or the rank indicator (RI) to the transmitting side (that is, base station). The CRS is also referred to as a cell-specific RS. On the contrary, a reference signal associated with a feed-back of channel state information (CSI) may be defined as CSI-RS.

The DRS may be transmitted through resource elements when data demodulation on the PDSCH is required. The terminal may receive whether the DRS is present through the upper layer and is valid only when the corresponding PDSCH is mapped. The DRS may be referred to as the UE-specific RS or the demodulation RS (DMRS).

FIG. 13 illustrates a reference signal pattern mapped to a downlink resource block pair in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Referring to FIG. 13, as a wise in which the reference signal is mapped, the downlink resource block pair may be expressed by one subframe in the timedomain×12 subcarriers in the frequency domain. That is, one resource block pair has a length of 14 OFDM symbols in the case of a normal cyclic prefix (CP) (FIG. 13a ) and a length of 12 OFDM symbols in the case of an extended cyclic prefix (CP) (FIG. 13b ). Resource elements (REs) represented as ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’ in a resource block lattice mean the positions of the CRSs of antenna port indexes ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’, respectively and resource elements represented as ‘D’ means the position of the DRS.

Hereinafter, when the CRS is described in more detail, the CRS is used to estimate a channel of a physical antenna and distributed in a whole frequency band as the reference signal which may be commonly received by all terminals positioned in the cell. Further, the CRS may be used to demodulate the channel quality information (CSI) and data.

The CRS is defined as various formats according to an antenna array at the transmitter side (base station). The 3GPP LTE system (for example, release-8) supports various antenna arrays and a downlink signal transmitting side has three types of antenna arrays of three single transmitting antennas, two transmitting antennas, and four transmitting antennas. When the base station uses the single transmitting antenna, a reference signal for a single antenna port is arrayed. When the base station uses two transmitting antennas, reference signals for two transmitting antenna ports are arrayed by using a time division multiplexing (TDM) scheme and/or a frequency division multiplexing (FDM) scheme. That is, different time resources and/or different frequency resources are allocated to the reference signals for two antenna ports which are distinguished from each other.

Moreover, when the base station uses four transmitting antennas, reference signals for four transmitting antenna ports are arrayed by using the TDM and/or FDM scheme. Channel information measured by a downlink signal receiving side (terminal) may be used to demodulate data transmitted by using a transmission scheme such as single transmitting antenna transmission, transmission diversity, closed-loop spatial multiplexing, open-loop spatial multiplexing, or multi-user MIMO.

In the case where the MIMO antenna is supported, when the reference signal is transmitted from a specific antenna port, the reference signal is transmitted to the positions of specific resource elements according to a pattern of the reference signal and not transmitted to the positions of the specific resource elements for another antenna port. That is, reference signals among different antennas are not duplicated with each other.

A rule of mapping the CRS to the resource block is defined as below.

$\begin{matrix} {{k = {{6m} + {\left( {v + v_{shift}} \right){mod}{\mspace{11mu} \;}6}}}{l = \left\{ {{{\begin{matrix} {0,{N_{symb}^{DL} - 3}} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} \in \left\{ {0,1} \right\}} \\ 1 & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} \in \left\{ {2,3} \right\}} \end{matrix}m} = 0},1,\ldots \mspace{14mu},{{{2 \cdot N_{RB}^{DL}} - {1m^{\prime}}} = {{m + N_{RB}^{\max,{DL}} - {N_{RB}^{DL}v}} = \left\{ {{\begin{matrix} 0 & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} = {{0\mspace{14mu} {and}\mspace{14mu} l} = 0}} \\ 3 & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} = {{0\mspace{14mu} {and}\mspace{14mu} l} \neq 0}} \\ 3 & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} = {{1\mspace{14mu} {and}\mspace{14mu} l} = 0}} \\ 0 & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} = {{l\mspace{14mu} {and}\mspace{14mu} l} \neq 0}} \\ {3\left( {n_{s}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 2} \right)} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} = 2} \\ {3 + {3\left( {n_{s}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 2} \right)}} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} p} = 3} \end{matrix}v_{shift}^{\;}} = {N_{ID}^{cell}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 6}} \right.}}} \right.}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 1} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

In Equation 1, k and l represent the subcarrier index and the symbol index, respectively and p represents the antenna port. N_(symb) ^(DL) represents the number of OFDM symbols in one downlink slot and N_(RB) ^(DL) represents the number of radio resources allocated to the downlink. ns represents a slot index and, N_(ID) ^(cell) represents a cell ID. mod represents an modulo operation. The position of the reference signal varies depending on the v_(shift) value in the frequency domain. Since v_(shift) is subordinated to the cell ID, the position of the reference signal has various frequency shift values according to the cell.

In more detail, the position of the CRS may be shifted in the frequency domain according to the cell in order to improve channel estimation performance through the CRS. For example, when the reference signal is positioned at an interval of three subcarriers, reference signals in one cell are allocated to a 3k-th subcarrier and a reference signal in another cell is allocated to a 3k+1-th subcarrier. In terms of one antenna port, the reference signals are arrayed at an interval of six resource elements in the frequency domain and separated from a reference signal allocated to another antenna port at an interval of three resource elements.

In the time domain, the reference signals are arrayed at a constant interval from symbol index 0 of each slot. The time interval is defined differently according to a cyclic shift length. In the case of the normal cyclic shift, the reference signal is positioned at symbol indexes 0 and 4 of the slot and in the case of the extended CP, the reference signal is positioned at symbol indexes 0 and 3 of the slot. A reference signal for an antenna port having a maximum value between two antenna ports is defined in one OFDM symbol. Therefore, in the case of transmission of four transmitting antennas, reference signals for reference signal antenna ports 0 and 1 are positioned at symbol indexes 0 and 4 (symbol indexes 0 and 3 in the case of the extended CP) and reference signals for antenna ports 2 and 3 are positioned at symbol index 1 of the slot. The positions of the reference signals for antenna ports 2 and 3 in the frequency domain are exchanged with each other in a second slot.

Hereinafter, when the DRS is described in more detail, the DRS is used for demodulating data. A precoding weight used for a specific terminal in the MIMO antenna transmission is used without a change in order to estimate a channel associated with and corresponding to a transmission channel transmitted in each transmitting antenna when the terminal receives the reference signal.

The 3GPP LTE system (for example, release-8) supports a maximum of four transmitting antennas and a DRS for rank 1 beamforming is defined. The DRS for the rank 1 beamforming also means a reference signal for antenna port index 5.

A rule of mapping the DRS to the resource block is defined as below. Equation 2 shows the case of the normal CP and Equation 3 shows the case of the extended CP.

$\begin{matrix} {{k = {{\left( k^{\prime} \right){mod}\mspace{14mu} N_{sc}^{RB}} + {N_{sc}^{RB} \cdot n_{PRB}}}}{k^{\prime} = \left\{ {{\begin{matrix} {{4m^{\prime}} + v_{shift}} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} l} \in \left\{ {2,3} \right\}} \\ {{4m^{\prime}} + {\left( {2 + v_{shift}} \right){mod}\mspace{14mu} 4}} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} l} \in \left\{ {5,6} \right\}} \end{matrix}l} = \left\{ {{\begin{matrix} 3 & {l^{\prime} = 0} \\ 6 & {l^{\prime} = 1} \\ 2 & {l^{\prime} = 2} \\ 5 & {l^{\prime} = 3} \end{matrix}l^{\prime}} = \left\{ {{{\begin{matrix} {0,1} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} n_{s}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 2} = 0} \\ {2,3} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} n_{s}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 2} = 1} \end{matrix}m^{\prime}} = 0},1,\ldots \mspace{14mu},{{{3N_{RB}^{PDSCH}} - {1v_{shift}}} = {N_{ID}^{cell}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 3}}} \right.} \right.} \right.}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 2} \right\rbrack \\ {{k = {{\left( k^{\prime} \right)\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} N_{sc}^{RB}} + {N_{sc}^{RB} \cdot n_{PRB}}}}k^{\prime} = \left\{ {{\begin{matrix} {{3m^{\prime}} + v_{shift}} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} l} = 4} \\ {{3m^{\prime}} + {\left( {2 + v_{shift}} \right){mod}\mspace{14mu} 3}} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} l} = 1} \end{matrix}l} = \left\{ {{\begin{matrix} 4 & {l^{\prime} \in \left\{ {0,2} \right\}} \\ 1 & {l^{\prime} = 1} \end{matrix}l^{\prime}} = \left\{ {{{\begin{matrix} 0 & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} n_{s}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 2} = 0} \\ {1,2} & {{{if}\mspace{14mu} n_{s}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{14mu} 2} = 1} \end{matrix}m^{\prime}} = 0},1,\ldots \mspace{14mu},{{{4N_{RB}^{PDSCH}} - {1v_{shift}}} = {N_{ID}^{cell}\mspace{14mu} {mod}\mspace{11mu} 3}}} \right.} \right.} \right.} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 3} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

In Equations 2 and 3, k and l represent the subcarrier index and the symbol index, respectively and p represents the antenna port. N_(sc) ^(RB) represents the size of the resource block in the frequency domain and is expressed as the number of subcarriers. n_(PRB) represents the number of physical resource blocks. N_(RB) ^(PDSCH) represents a frequency band of the resource block for the PDSCH transmission. ns represents the slot index and N_(ID) ^(cell) represents the cell ID. mod represents the modulo operation. The position of the reference signal varies depending on the v_(shift) value in the frequency domain. Since v_(shift) is subordinated to the cell ID, the position of the reference signal has various frequency shift values according to the cell.

Sounding Reference Signal (SRS)

The SRS is primarily used for the channel quality measurement in order to perform frequency-selective scheduling and is not associated with transmission of the uplink data and/or control information. However, the SRS is not limited thereto and the SRS may be used for various other purposes for supporting improvement of power control and various start-up functions of terminals which have not been scheduled. One example of the start-up function may include an initial modulation and coding scheme (MCS), initial power control for data transmission, timing advance, and frequency semi-selective scheduling. In this case, the frequency semi-selective scheduling means scheduling that selectively allocates the frequency resource to the first slot of the subframe and allocates the frequency resource by pseudo-randomly hopping to another frequency in the second slot.

Further, the SRS may be used for measuring the downlink channel quality on the assumption that the radio channels between the uplink and the downlink are reciprocal. The assumption is valid particularly in the time division duplex in which the uplink and the downlink share the same frequency spectrum and are divided in the time domain.

Subframes of the SRS transmitted by any terminal in the cell may be expressed by a cell-specific broadcasting signal. A 4-bit cell-specific ‘srsSubframeConfiguration’ parameter represents 15 available subframe arrays in which the SRS may be transmitted through each radio frame. By the arrays, flexibility for adjustment of the SRS overhead is provided according to a deployment scenario.

A 16-th array among them completely turns off a switch of the SRS in the cell and is suitable primarily for a serving cell that serves high-speed terminals.

FIG. 14 illustrates an uplink subframe including a sounding reference signal symbol in the wireless communication system to which the present invention can be applied.

Referring to FIG. 14, the SRS is continuously transmitted through a last SC FDMA symbol on the arrayed subframes. Therefore, the SRS and the DMRS are positioned at different SC-FDMA symbols.

The PUSCH data transmission is not permitted in a specific SC-FDMA symbol for the SRS transmission and consequently, when sounding overhead is highest, that is, even when the SRS symbol is included in all subframes, the sounding overhead does not exceed approximately 7%.

Each SRS symbol is generated by a base sequence (random sequence or a sequence set based on Zadoff-Ch (ZC)) associated with a given time wise and a given frequency band and all terminals in the same cell use the same base sequence. In this case, SRS transmissions from a plurality of terminals in the same cell in the same frequency band and at the same time are orthogonal to each other by different cyclic shifts of the base sequence to be distinguished from each other.

SRS sequences from different cells may be distinguished fro each other by allocating different base sequences to respective cells, but orthogonality among different base sequences is not assured.

Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission and Reception (COMP)

According to a demand of LTE-advanced, CoMP transmission is proposed in order to improve the performance of the system. The CoMP is also called co-MIMO, collaborative MIMO, network MIMO, and the like. It is anticipated that the CoMP will improves the performance of the terminal positioned at a cell edge and improve an average throughput of the cell (sector).

In general, inter-cell interference decreases the performance and the average cell (sector) efficiency of the terminal positioned at the cell edge in a multi-cell environment in which a frequency reuse index is 1. In order to alleviate the inter-cell interference, the LTE system adopts a simple passive method such as fractional frequency reuse (FFR) in the LTE system so that the terminal positioned at the cell edge has appropriate performance efficiency in an interference-limited environment. However, a method that reuses the inter-cell interference or alleviates the inter-cell interference as a signal (desired signal) which the terminal needs to receive is more preferable instead of reduction of the use of the frequency resource for each cell. The CoMP transmission scheme may be adopted in order to achieve the aforementioned object.

The CoMP scheme which may be applied to the downlink may be classified into a joint processing (JP) scheme and a coordinated scheduling/beamforming (CS/CB) scheme.

In the JP scheme, the data may be used at each point (base station) in a CoMP wise. The CoMP wise means a set of base stations used in the CoMP scheme. The JP scheme may be again classified into a joint transmission scheme and a dynamic cell selection scheme.

The joint transmission scheme means a scheme in which the signal is simultaneously transmitted through a plurality of points which are all or fractional points in the CoMP wise. That is, data transmitted to a single terminal may be simultaneously transmitted from a plurality of transmission points. Through the joint transmission scheme, the quality of the signal transmitted to the terminal may be improved regardless of coherently or non-coherently and interference with another terminal may be actively removed.

The dynamic cell selection scheme means a scheme in which the signal is transmitted from the single point through the PDSCH in the CoMP wise. That is, data transmitted to the single terminal at a specific time is transmitted from the single point and data is not transmitted to the terminal at another point in the CoMP wise. The point that transmits the data to the terminal may be dynamically selected.

According to the CS/CB scheme, the CoMP wise performs beamforming through coordination for transmitting the data to the single terminal. That is, the data is transmitted to the terminal only in the serving cell, but user scheduling/beamforming may be determined through coordination of a plurality of cells in the CoMP wise.

In the case of the uplink, CoMP reception means receiving the signal transmitted by the coordination among a plurality of points which are geographically separated. The CoMP scheme which may be applied to the uplink may be classified into a joint reception (JR) scheme and the coordinated scheduling/beamforming (CS/CB) scheme.

The JR scheme means a scheme in which the plurality of points which are all or fractional points receives the signal transmitted through the PDSCH in the CoMP wise. In the CS/CB scheme, only the single point receives the signal transmitted through the PDSCH, but the user scheduling/beamforming may be determined through the coordination of the plurality of cells in the CoMP wise.

Cross-CC Scheduling and E-PDCCH Scheduling

In the existing 3GPP LTE Rel-10 system, if a cross-CC scheduling operation is defined in an aggregation situation for a plurality of CCs (component carrier=(serving) cell), one CC may be preset to be able to receive DL/UL scheduling from only one specific CC (i.e., scheduling CC) (namely, to be able to receive DL/UL grant PDCCH for the corresponding scheduled CC).

The corresponding scheduling CC may basically perform a DL/UL scheduling for the scheduling CC itself.

In other words, the SS for the PDCCH scheduling the scheduling/scheduled CC in the cross-CC scheduling relation may come to exist in the control channel area of the scheduling CC.

Meanwhile, in the LTE system, CFDD DL carrier or TDD DL subframes use first n OFDM symbols of the subframe for PDCCH, PHICH, PCFICH and the like which are physical channels for transmission of various control informations and use the rest of the OFDM symbols for PDSCH transmission.

At this time, the number of symbols used for control channel transmission in each subframe is dynamically transmitted to the UE through the physical channel such as PCFICH or is semi-statically transmitted to the UE through RRC signaling.

At this time, particularly, value n may be set by 1 to 4 symbols depending on the subframe characteristic and system characteristic (FDD/TDD, system bandwidth, etc.).

Meanwhile, in the existing LTE system, PDCCH, which is the physical channel for transmitting DL/UL scheduling and various control information, may be transmitted through limited OFDM symbols.

Hence, the enhanced PDCCH (i.e., E-PDCCH), which is more freely multiplexed in PDSCH and FDM/TDM scheme, may be introduced instead of the control channel which is transmitted through the OFDM which is separated from the PDSCH like PDCCH.

FIG. 15 illustrates an example of multiplexing legacy PDCCH, PDSCH and E-PDCCH.

Here, the legacy PDCCH may be expressed as L-PDCCH.

FIG. 16 is a diagram illustrating a cell classification in a system that supports the carrier aggregation.

Referring to FIG. 16, a configured cell is a cell that should be carrier-merged based on a measurement report among the cells of a BS may be configured for each terminal. The configured cell may reserve a resource for an ACK/NACK transmission for a PDSCH transmission beforehand. An activated cell is a cell that is configured to transmit PDSCH/PUSCH actually among the configured cells, and performs a Channel State Information (CSI) report for the PDSCH/PUSCH transmission and a Sounding Reference Signal (SRS) transmission. A de-activated cell is a cell that does not transmit the PDSCH/PUSCH transmission by a command of BS or a timer operation, may also stop the CSI report and the SRS transmission.

Synchronization Signal/Sequence (SS)

An SS includes a primary (P)-SS and a secondary (S)-SS, and corresponds to a signal used when a cell search is performed.

FIG. 17 is a diagram illustrating a frame structure used for an SS transmission in a system that uses a normal cyclic prefix (CP). FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating a frame structure used for an SS transmission in a system that uses an extended CP.

The SS is transmitted in 0th subframe and second slot of the fifth subframe, respectively, considering 4.6 ms which is a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) frame length for the easiness of an inter-Radio Access Technology (RAT) measurement, and a boundary for the corresponding radio frame may be detected through the S-SS. The P-SS is transmitted in the last OFDM symbol of the corresponding slot and the S-SS is transmitted in the previous OFDM symbol of the P-SS.

The SS may transmit total 504 physical cell IDs through the combination of 3 P-SSs and 168 S-SSs. In addition, the SS and the PBCH are transmitted within 6 RBs at the center of a system bandwidth such that a terminal may detect or decode them regardless of the transmission bandwidth.

A transmission diversity scheme of the SS is to use a single antenna port only and not separately used in a standard. That is, the transmission diversity scheme of the SS uses a single antenna transmission or a transmission technique transparent to a terminal (e.g., Precoder Vector Switching (PVS), Time-Switched Transmit Diversity (TSTD) and Cyclic-Delay Diversity (CDD)).

1. P-SS Sign

Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequence of length 63 in frequency domain may be defined and used as a sequence of the P-SS. The ZC sequence is defined by Equation 4, a sequence element, n=31 that corresponds to a DC subcarrier is punctured. In Equation 4, N_zc=63.

$\begin{matrix} {{d_{u\;}(n)} = e^{{- j}\frac{\pi \; {{un}{({n + 1})}}}{N_{ZC}}}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 4} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

Among 6 RBs (=7 subcarriers) positioned at the center of frequency domain, the remaining 9 subcarriers are always transmitted in zero value, which makes it easy to design a filter for performing synchronization. In order to define total three P-SSs, the value of u=29, 29 and 34 may be used in Equation 4. In this case, since 29 and 34 have the conjugate symmetry relation, two correlations may be simultaneously performed. Here, the conjugate symmetry means Equation 5. By using the characteristics, it is possible to implement one shot correlater for u=29 and 43, and accordingly, about 33.3% of total amount of calculation may be decreased.

d _(u)(n)=(−1)^(n)(d _(N) _(ZC) _(−u)(n))*,

when N_(ZC) is even number.

d _(u)(n)=(d _(N) _(ZC) _(−u)(n))*,  [Equation 5]

when N_(ZC) is odd number.

2. S-SS Sign

The sequence used for the S-SS is combined with two interleaved m-sequences of length 31, and 168 cell group IDs are transmitted by combining two sequences. The m-sequence as the SSS sequence is robust in the frequency selective environment, and may be transformed to the high-speed m-sequence using the Fast Hadamard Transform, thereby the amount of operations being decreased. In addition, the configuration of SSS using two short codes is proposed to decrease the amount of operations of terminal.

FIG. 19 is a diagram illustrating two sequences in a logical region being mapped to a physical region by being interleaved.

Referring to FIG. 19, when two m-sequences used for generating the S-SS sign are defined by S1 and S2, in the case that the S-SS (S1, S2) of subframe 0 transmits the cell group ID with the combination, the S-SS (S2, S1) of subframe 5 is transmitted with being swapped, thereby distinguishing the 10 ms frame boundary. In this case, the SSS sign uses the generation polynomial x5+x2+1, and total 31 signs may be generated through the circular shift.

In order to improve the reception performance, two different P-SS-based sequences are defined and scrambled to the S-SS, and scrambled to S1 and S2 with different sequences. Later, by defining the S1-based scrambling sign, the scrambling is performed to S2. In this case, the sign of S-SS is exchanged in a unit of 5 ms, but the P-SS-based scrambling sign is not exchanged. The P-SS-based scrambling sign is defined by six circular shift versions according to the P-SS index in the m-sequence generated from the generation polynomial x5+x2+1, and the S1-based scrambling sign is defined by eight circular shift versions according to the S1 index in the m-sequence generated from the generation polynomial x5+x4+x2+x1+1.

The contents below exemplify an asynchronous standard of the LTE system.

-   -   A terminal may monitor a downlink link quality based on a         cell-specific reference signal in order to detect a downlink         radio link quality of PCell.     -   A terminal may estimate a downlink radio link quality for the         purpose of monitoring the downlink radio link quality of PCell,         and may compare it with Q_out and Q_in, which are thresholds.     -   The threshold value Q_out may be defined as a level in which a         downlink radio link is not certainly received, and may         correspond to a block error rate 10% of a hypothetical PDCCH         transmission considering a PCFICH together with transmission         parameters.     -   The threshold value Q_in may be defined as a downlink radio link         quality level, which may be great and more certainly received         than Q_out, and may correspond to a block error rate 2% of a         hypothetical PDCCH transmission considering a PCFICH together         with transmission parameters.

Narrow Band (NB) LTE Cell Search

In the NB-LTE, although a cell search may follow the same rule as the LTE, there may be an appropriate modification in the sequence design in order to increase the cell search capability.

FIG. 20 is a diagram illustrating a frame structure to which M-PSS and M-SSS are mapped. In the present disclosure, an M-PSS designates the P-SS in the NB-LTE, and an M-SSS designates the S-SS in the NB-LTE. The M-PSS may also be designated to ‘NB-PSS’ and the M-SSS may also be designated to ‘NB-SSS’.

Referring to FIG. 20, in the case of the M-PSS, a single primary synchronization sequence/signal may be used. (M-)PSS may be spanned up to 9 OFDM symbol lengths, and used for determining subframe timing as well as an accurate frequency offset.

This may be interpreted that a terminal may use the M-PSS for acquiring time and frequency synchronization with a BS. In this case, (M-)PSS may be consecutively located in time domain.

The M-SSS may be spanned up to 6 OFDM symbol lengths, and used for determining the timing of a cell identifier and an M-frame. This may be interpreted that a terminal may use the M-SSS for detecting an identifier of a BS. In order to support the same number as the number of cell identifier groups of the LTE, 504 different (M-)SSS may be designed.

Referring to the design of FIG. 20, the M-PSS and the M-SSS are repeated every 20 ms average, and existed/generated four times in a block of 80 ms. In the subframes that include synchronization sequences, the M-PSS occupies the last 9 OFDM symbols. The M-SSS occupies 6th, 7th, 10th, 11th, 13th and 14th OFDM symbols in the case of normal CP, and occupies 5th, 6th, 9th, 11th and 12th OFDM symbols in the case of extended CP.

The 9 OFDM symbols occupied by the M-PSS may be selected to support for the in-band disposition between LTE carriers. This is because the first three OFDM symbols are used to carry a PDCCH in the hosting LTE system and a subframe includes minimum twelve OFDM symbols (in the case of extended CP).

In the hosting LTE system, a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) is transmitted, and the resource elements that correspond to the M-PSS may be punctured in order to avoid a collision. In the NB-LTE, a specific position of M-PSS/M-SSS may be determined to avoid a collision with many legacy LTE signals such as the PDCCH, the PCFICH, the PHICH and/or the MBSFN.

In comparison with the LTE, the synchronization sequence design in the NB-LTE may be different.

This may be performed in order to attain a compromise between decreased memory consumption and faster synchronization in a terminal. Since the M-SSS is repeated four times in 80 ms duration, a slight design modification for the M-SSS may be required in the 80 ms duration in order to solve a timing uncertainty.

Structure of M-PSS and M-SSS

In the LTE, the PSS structure allows the low complexity design of timing and frequency offset measuring instrument, and the SSS is designed to acquire frame timing and to support unique 504 cell identifiers.

In the case of In-band and Guard-band of the LTE, the disposition of CP in the NB-LTE may be selected to match the CP in a hosting system. In the case of standalone, the extended CP may be used for matching a transmitter pulse shape for exerting the minimum damage to the hosting system (e.g., GSM).

A single M-PSS may be clearly stated in the N-LTE of the LTE. In the procedure of PSS synchronization of the LTE, for each of PSSs, a specific number of frequency speculations may be used for the coarse estimation of symbol timing and frequency offset.

Such an adaption of the procedure in the NB-LTE may increase the process complexity of a receiver according to the use of a plurality of frequency assumptions. In order to solve the problem, a sequence resembling of the Zadoff-Chu sequence which is differentially decoded in time domain may be proposed for the M-PSS. Since the differential decoding is performed in a transmission process, the differential decoding may be performed during the processing time of a receiver. Consequently, a frequency offset may be transformed from the consecutive rotation for symbols to the fixed phase offset with respect to the corresponding symbols.

FIG. 21 is a diagram illustrating a method for generating M-PSS according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 21, first, when starting with a basic sequence of length 107 as a basis in order to generate an M-PSS, Equation 6 below may be obtained.

$\begin{matrix} {{{c(n)} = e^{- \frac{j\; \pi \; {{un}{({n + 1})}}}{N}}},{n = \left\{ {0,1,2,\ldots \mspace{14mu},106} \right\}}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 6} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

The basic sequence c(n) may be differentially decoded in order to obtain d(n) sequence as represented in Equation 7.

d(n+1)=d(n)c(n),n={0,1,2, . . . ,106},d(0)=1,  [Equation 7]

The d(n) sequence is divided into 9 sub sequences, and each sub sequence has a length 12 and a sampling rate of 130 kHz. The 120-point FFT is performed for each of 9 sub sequences, and each sequence may be oversampled 128/12 times up to 1.92 MHz sampling rate using 128 IFFT zero padding. Consequently, each sub sequence may be mapped to 12 subcarriers for 9 OFDM symbols, respectively.

Each of the sub sequences is mapped to a single OFDM symbol, and the M-PSS may occupy total 9 OFDM symbols since total 9 sub sequences are existed. Total length of the M-PSS may be 1234(=(128+9)*9+1) when the normal CP of 9 samples are used, and may be 1440 when the extended CP is used.

The M-PSS which is going to be actually used during the transmission is not required to be generated every time using complex procedure in a transmitter/receiver in the same manner. The complexity coefficient (i.e., t_u(n)) that corresponds to the M-PSS may be generated in offline, and directly stored in the transmitter/receiver. In addition, even in the case that the M-PSS is generated in 1.92 MHz, the occupation bandwidth may be 180 kHz.

Accordingly, in the case of performing the procedure related to time and frequency offset measurements using the M-PSS in a receiver, the sampling rate of 192 kHz may be used for all cases. This may significantly decrease the complexity of receiver in the cell search.

In comparison with the LTE, the frequency in which the M-PSS is generated in the NB-LTE causes slightly greater overhead than the PSS in the LTE. More particularly, the synchronization sequence used in the LTE occupies 2.86% of the entire transmission resources, and the synchronization sequence used in the NB-LTE occupies about 5.36% of the entire transmission resources. Such an additional overhead has an effect of decreasing memory consumption as well as the synchronization time that leads to the improved battery life and the lower device price.

The M-SSS is designed in frequency domain and occupies 12 subcarriers in each of 6 OFDM symbols. Accordingly, the number of resource elements dedicated to the M-SSS may be 72. The M-SSS includes the ZC sequence of a single length 61 which are padded by eleven ‘0’s on the starting point.

In the case of the extended CP, the first 12 symbols of the M-SSS may be discarded, and the remaining symbols may be mapped to the valid OFDM symbols, which cause to discard only a single symbol among the sequence of length 61 since eleven ‘0’s are existed on the starting point. The discard of the symbol causes the slight degradation of the correlation property of other SSS.

The cyclic shift of a sequence and the sequence for different roots may easily provide specific cell identifiers up to 504. The reason why the ZC sequence is used in the NB-LTE in comparison with the LTE is to decrease the error detection rate. Since a common sequence for two different cell identifier groups is existed, an additional procedure is required in the LTE.

Since the M-PSS/M-SSS occur four times within the block of 80 ms, the LTE design of the SSS cannot be used for providing accurate timing information within the corresponding block. This is because the special interleaving structure that may determine only two positions. Accordingly, a scrambling sequence may be used in an upper part of the ZC sequence in order to provide the information of frame timing. Four scrambling sequences may be required to determine four positions within the block of 80 ms, which may influence on acquiring the accurate timing.

FIG. 22 is a diagram illustrating a method for generating M-SSS according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Referring to FIG. 22, the M-SSS may be defined as s_p,q(n)=a_p(n)·b_q(n). Herein, p={0, 1, . . . , 503} represents cell identifiers and q={0, 1, 2, 3} determines the position of the M-SSS (i.e., the number of M-SSS within the block of 80 ms which is generated before the latest SSS). In addition, a_p(n) and b_q(n) may be determined by Equations 8 and 9 below.

$\begin{matrix} {\begin{matrix} {{{a_{p}(n)} = 0},\mspace{45mu} {n = {\left\{ {{0 - 4},{66 - 71}} \right\} }}} \\ {{= {a_{p}\left( {n - k_{p} - 5} \right)}},\mspace{45mu} {n = {\left\{ {5,6,\ldots \mspace{14mu},65} \right\} }}} \end{matrix}{\quad {{{a_{p}(n)} = e^{- \frac{j\; \pi \; {n{(p)}}{n{({n + 1})}}}{61}}},{n = {\left\{ {0,1,\ldots \mspace{14mu},61} \right\} }}}}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 8} \right\rbrack \\ {{{{b_{q}(n)} = {{{b\left( {{mod}\left( {{n - l_{q}},63} \right)} \right)}\mspace{45mu} n} = \left\{ {0,1,{\ldots \mspace{14mu} 60}} \right\}}},{q = \left\{ {0,1,2,3} \right\}},{l_{0} = 0},{l_{1} = 3},{l_{2} = 7},{l_{3} = {11}}}{{{b\left( {n + 6} \right)} = {{mod}\left( {{{b(n)} + {b\left( {n + 1} \right)}},2} \right)}},{n = \left\{ {0,1,{\ldots \mspace{14mu} 55}} \right\}},}{{{b(0)} = 1},{{b(m)} = 0},{m = {\left\{ {1,2,3,4,5} \right\} }}}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 9} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

Referring to Equation 8, a_p(n) is the ZC sequence and determines a cell identifier group. m(p) and cyclic shift k_p may be used for providing a specific cell identifier. Referring to Equation 9, b_q(n) may be the scrambling sequence that includes a cyclic shift of the basic sequence b_(n), and may be used for indicating the position of the M-SSS in the M-frame in order to acquire the frame timing. The cyclic shift l_q may be determined according to the value q.

The value of m(p) with respect to the specific p may be determined such as m(p)=1+mod(p, 61), the value of k_p may be determined such as k_p=7[p/61].

FIG. 23 illustrates an example of a method for implementing M-PSS to which the method proposed in the present disclosure can be applied.

Particularly, FIG. 23 shows a method for generating an M-PSS using a complementary Golay sequence.

As shown in FIG. 23, using a complementary Golay sequence pair, a CGS that is going to be transmitted to each OFDM symbol is selected (i.e., select a(n) or b(n)).

Next, in the case of using a cover code, c(1) to c(N) may be multiplied to each CGS, and in the case of not using the cover code, 1 may be inputted to all of c(n).

Subsequently, the DFT and the IFFT are performed for each symbol, and transmitted to each OFDM symbol on time domain.

Additionally, the ZC sequence of length 12 may also generate a sequence that is going to be transmitted to each OFDM symbol.

In this case, by using the same method applied in FIG. 23, the M-PSS may be implemented.

NB (Narrow Band)-LTE System

Hereinafter, NB-LTE (or NB-IoT) system will be described.

The UL of NB-LTE is based on SC-FDMA, and this is a special case of SC-FDMA and may flexibly allocate the bandwidth of the UE including single tone transmission.

One important aspect for the UL SC-FDMA is to enable time of a multiple of co-scheduled UEs coincide with each other so that the arrival time difference in the base station to be within the cyclic prefix (CP).

Ideally, the UL 15 kHz subcarrier spacing should be used in NB-LTE, but the time-accuracy, which may be achieved when detecting PRACH from the UEs in a very poor coverage condition, should be considered.

Hence, CP duration needs to be increased.

One way to achieve the above purpose is to reduce the subcarrier spacing for NB-LTE M-PUSCH to 2.5 kHz by dividing 15 kHz subcarrier spacing by 6.

Another motive for reducing subcarrier spacing is to allow a user multiplexing of a high level.

For example, one user is basically allocated to one subcarrier.

This is more effective for UEs in a condition that the coverage is very limited like UEs having no benefit from allocation of a high bandwidth while the capacity increases due to the simultaneous use of the maximum TX power of a multiple of UEs.

SC-FDMA is used for transmission of a multiple of tones in order to support a higher data rate along with the additional PAPR reduction technology.

The UL NB-LTE includes 3 basic channels including M-PRACH, M-PUCCH and M-PUSCH.

The design of M-PUCCH discuses at least three alternative plans as follows.

-   -   One tone in each edge of the system bandwidth     -   UL control information transmission on M-PRACH or M-PUSCH     -   Not having dedicated UL control channel

Time-Domain Frame and Structure

In the UL of NB-LTE having 2.5 kHz subcarrier spacing, the wireless frame and the subframe are defined as 60 ms and 6 ms, respectively.

As in the DL of NB-LTE, M-frame and M-subframe are defined in the same manner in the UL link of the NB-LTE.

FIG. 24 illustrates how the UL numerology is stretched in the time domain.

The NB-LTE carrier includes 5 PRBs in the frequency domain. Each NB-LTE PRB includes 12 subcarriers.

The UL frame structure based on 2.5 kHz subcarrier spacing is illustrated in FIG. 17.

FIG. 24 illustrates an example of UL numerology which is stretched in the time domain when the subcarrier spacing is reduced from 15 kHz to 2.5 kHz.

FIG. 25 illustrates an example of time units for the UL of NB-LTE based on the 2.5 kHz subcarrier spacing.

Operation System of NB-LTE System

FIG. 26 illustrates an example of an operation system of NB-LTE system to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

Specifically, FIG. 26(a) illustrates an in-band system, FIG. 26(b) illustrates a guard-band system, and FIG. 26(c) illustrates a stand-alone system.

The in-band system may be expressed as an in-band mode, the guard-band system may be expressed as a guard-band mode, and the stand-alone system may be expressed as a stand-alone mode.

The in-band system of FIG. 26(a) indicates a system or mode which uses a specific 1 RB within the legacy LTE band for NB-LTE (or LTE-NB) and may be operated by allocating some resource blocks of the LTE system carrier.

The guard-band system of FIG. 25(b) indicates a system or mode which uses NB-LTE in the space which is reserved for the guard band of the legacy LTE band and may be operated by allocating the guard-band of LTE carrier which is not used as the resource block in the LTE system.

The legacy LTE band includes the minimum 100 kHz at the last of each LTE band.

In order to use 200 kHz, 2 non-continuous guardbands may be used.

The in-band system and the guard-band system indicate the structure where NB-LTE co-exists within the legacy LTE band.

In contrast, the standalone system of FIG. 26(c) indicates a system or mode which is independently configured from the legacy LTE band and may be operated by separately allocating the frequency band (future reallocated GSM carrier) which is used in the GERAN.

FIG. 27 illustrates an example of an NB-frame structure of 15 kHz subcarrier spacing to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

As illustrated in FIG. 27, it may be understood that the NB-frame structure for 15 kHz subcarrier spacing is the same as the frame structure of the legacy system (LTE system).

Namely, 10 ms NB-frame includes 10 1 ms NB-subframes, and 1 ms NB-subframe includes 2 0.5 ms NB-slots.

Further, 0.5 ms NB-slot includes 7 OFDM symbols.

FIG. 28 illustrates an example of NB-frame structure for 3.75 kHz subcarrier spacing to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

Referring to FIG. 28, 10 ms NB-frame includes 5 2 ms NB-subframes, and 2 ms NB-subframe includes 7 OFDM symbols one guard-period (GP).

The 2 ms NB-subframe may also be expressed as NB-slot or NB-RU (resource unit), etc.

FIG. 29 illustrates an example of NB subframe structure in 3.75 kHz subcarrier spacing to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 29 shows the correspondence between legacy LTE subframe structure and 3.75 subframe structure.

Referring to FIG. 29, subframe (2 ms) of 3.75 kHz corresponds to 2 1 ms subframes (or 1 ms TTIs) of the legacy LTE.

UL Processing Chain

In the NB LTE system, the single tone transmission is used for M-PUSCH (or NPUSCH) in order to minimize PAPR, and as a result, the coverage is improved.

A specific procedure of the M-PUSCH processing is described with reference to FIG. 30.

FIG. 30 illustrates an example of PUSCH processing in NB-IoT system to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

FIG. 31 illustrates an example of an LTE turbo encoder used for PUSCH in NB-IoT system to which the method proposed in the present specification is applicable.

CRC generation of M-PUSCH uses a polynomial which is the same as a polynomial for generating the CRC of M-PDSCH.

In the NB LTE system, the channel coding of the M-PUSCH is based on the LTE turbo code encoder as illustrated in FIG. 31.

The interleaving and the rate matching are the same as the method of M-PDSCH.

Encoded bits after the rate matching are scrambled with the scrambling mask which is generated according to the RNTI associated with the M-M-PUSCH transmission.

The scrambled codeword is modulated with BPSK or QPSK according to Table 6 below.

Table 6 shows an example of BPSK modulation mapping.

TABLE 6 b(i) I Q 0 1 0 1 −1 0

The modulated symbols are grouped in the subcarriers allocated to the M-PUSCH.

In the case of the single tone transmission, the transform precoding block of FIG. 19 is omitted and the group of MF tones is directed by the base station. The MF may be 1, 2, 4, or 8.

If only one tone is directed from the base station (i.e., MF=1), the one directed tone is used for M-PUSCH transmission.

Otherwise, if a multitude of tones are directed from the base station, each set of log 2MF+log 2MQ bits is determined through the tone transmitted between MF tones and the combination of modulation symbols.

Here, the MQ corresponds the modulation order, and the value is 2 in the BPSK and the value is 4 in the QPSK.

With respect to the SC-FDMA transmission having a multiple of continuous subcarriers within one cluster, the transform precoding block of FIG. 30 is applied to each group in order to obtain frequency-domain symbols (known as SC-FDMA).

In addition, in order to further lower PAPR for BPSK/QPSK, additionally potential PAPR reduction technologies may be applied.

An example of PAPR reduction technologies is to apply an additional precoding filter of M×L dimension (M>L) to the filer of the L×L DFT precoding.

Thereafter, the first baseband time-continuous signal is generated based on frequency-domain symbols as in equation 10 below.

$\begin{matrix} {{s_{l}(t)} = {\sum\limits_{k = {{- M}/2}}^{{M/2} - 1}{a_{k,l} \cdot e^{j\; 2\; {\pi {({k + {1/2}})}}\Delta \; {f{({t - {N_{{CP},l}T_{s}}})}}}}}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 10} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

With respect to 0≦t<(N_(CP,l)+N)×T_(s) of Equation 10, M means the number of subcarriers allocated to M-PUSCH, N=128, Δf=2.5 kHz, T_(s)=1/320000 and a_(k,l) means the frequency-domain symbol of the subcarrier corresponding to k+M/2.

Table 7 below shows values of used N_(CP,l).

In a special case that M=1, the first baseband time-continuous signal is generated based on frequency-domain symbols as Equation 10 below.

s _(l)(t)=a _(0,l) ·e ^(−jπΔf(t−N) ^(CP,l) ^(T) ^(s) ⁾  [Equation 11]

Table 7 shows an example of CUL CP length.

TABLE 7 Configuration Cyclic prefix length N_(CP, l) Normal cyclic prefix 10 for l = 0 9 for l = 1, 2, . . . , 6

In the above Equations 10 and 11, Δf means a subcarrier spacing and T_(s) means the sampling time.

As described above, the NB-IoT system means a system for supporting communication of UEs which use a narrowband and have the characteristic of a low cost and a low complexity.

Further, the NB-IoT system considers an access situation of a multiple of UEs using a restricted communication resource and has the goal of supporting a coverage wider than the coverage of the legacy LTE.

In order to obtain the effects of the coverage extension through the limited number of resources (e.g., subcarrier), the NB-IoT system considers an UL transmission method and repetitive transmission method which uses a single tone or single subcarrier.

However, in the case of NB-IoT system, the simultaneous access to a sufficient number of UEs may not be achieved by a multiplexing method in the existing frequency domain and time domain due to the basically restricted communication resource.

If the case that the UE, which needs data transmission, needs to wait for the data transmission due to the failure of the data channel allocation therefor, the energy consumption of the UE due to the data transmission delay may occur.

Such a situation finally results in a significant reduction of the energy efficiency of NB-IoT system.

Hence, in order to solve the above problem, the present specification proposes a method for increasing the number of UEs which are multiplexed through the same resource (time and/or frequency resource) in the NB-IoT (or NB-LTE) system, solving the problem of the inter-cell interference (ICI) which may be generated between adjacent cells, and extending the coverage.

Further, the method proposed in the present specification has the feature of considering the PAPR (peak-to-average power ratio) performance which is one of importance indexes in the NB-IoT.

Hereafter, the description is limited to the PUSCH in the NB-IoT system for the convenience of description, but the method proposed in the present specification may also be applied to the transmission of a DL/UL data channel of another system which additionally requires a multiplexing gain and a DL/UL control channel.

The expression “A and/or B” used in the present specification may be understood in the same manner as the expression including “at least one among A and B”.

Method of Using a Codeword Cover for PUSCH Transmission

First, a method of using a codeword cover for the multiplexing of the PUSCH transmission between UEs in the NB-IoT system is described.

As described above, the NB-IoT system supports repetition of data or signals through a multiple of symbols in order to support the coverage enhancement.

Hence, the present specification presents a method of increasing a multiplexing gain by applying a codeword cover to several repeated time units.

At this time, the time unit, which becomes the criterion of the repetition, may include a radio frame, a subframe bundle or a subframe group (or set), a subframe, a slot, a symbol, or a symbol group, and various time units, which may be considered in the NB-IoT, may be used.

Hereinafter, the description is made on the basis of the repetition pattern of the symbol unit for the convenience of description. Yet, the method suggested in the present specification may also be applied to a system which uses the repetition of other time units in addition to the symbol unit.

Generally, after a multiple of UEs are allocated the same resource, i.e., the same subcarrier and the same time, from the base station, when the UL signal is transmitted to the base station using the allocated same resource, it may be impossible to distinguish the received signal due to a mutual interference.

Hereinafter, when a multiple of UEs transmit an UL signal to the base station through the same resource using a specific codewords cover, a method of distinguishing a transmission signal of UEs in the base station will be specifically described.

FIG. 32 illustrates an example of a method of applying a codeword cover proposed in the present specification to a repeated symbol of a time domain.

When a specific data is repeated (transmitted) in a specific time unit through N symbols, the UE multiplies the (promised) codewords cover of length N by the N repetition symbols, and then transmits the generated codeword covered symbol to the base station.

Here, the codewords, which are used for the codewords cover which are applied to the N repetition symbols, are previously fixed values or are configured by the base station (e.g., eNodeB), and the set information may be transmitted by the base station to the UE through a signaling.

The signaling may be a RRC signaling, a physical signaling, and the like.

FIG. 32 shows a process that the codewords cover of length 4 is applied to 4 repetition symbols.

Referring to FIG. 32, data having value “1” are repeated through 4 symbols, and the codeword cover of length 4 is applied to the 4 repeated symbols so that the codeword covered symbol of length 4 is generated.

Configuration of Orthogonal Codewords Cover

Next, a method of configuring an orthogonal codewords cover is described as a method of configuring a codewords cover which is proposed in the present specification.

The orthogonal codewords cover has an advantage that the distinction between UEs having been allocated each codewords cover may become clear.

In the case of a system which is sensitive to PAPR performance like NB-IoT, the orthogonal codeword cover is preferably configured or designed not to damage the PAPR performance.

Further, one of the factors influencing the change of the phase in the continuous symbol is a zero crossing generated due to a rapid change of the phase between symbols, or a phenomenon similar to (or close to) the zero crossing.

Hence, when the orthogonal codeword cover proposed in the present specification is configured, in the symbol set having the orthogonal codewords cover applied thereto, the phase change between symbols is preferably generated in the smoothest way possible.

As a way to satisfy such a condition, the present specification provides a method of configuring an orthogonal codewords cover using DFT matrix.

Since each row vector configuring the DFT matrix has an orthogonal property between them, it is appropriate to configure an orthogonal codewords cover proposed in the present specification using the row vector of the DFT matrix.

Yet, in order to minimize the PAPR effects in the above-described NB-IoT system, the method of selecting only a portion from row vectors of the DFT matrix will be additionally described.

For example, (1, −1, 1, −1) corresponding to one row vector of 4×4 DFT matrix satisfies the orthogonal property which is at right angles to other row vectors, but when multiplied by the symbol repetition set, it may cause a zero crossing between adjacent symbols, and thus it is desirable to be exempted at the time of determining the orthogonal codewords cover.

Further, row vectors of some DFT matrixes do not generate a zero crossing but may generate effects similar to (or close to) the zero crossing.

Hence, the method proposed in the present specification sequentially selects or determines the codewords cover by putting priority on the vectors which do not increase the PAPR of NB-IoT system in the process of generating or configuring an orthogonal codewords cover using DFT matrix.

Namely, when the orthogonal codewords cover is configured using the above-described DFT matrix, the codewords covers with less increasing effects of the PAPR are first defined to be selected.

The method of selecting an orthogonal codewords cover using the DFT matrix may be specifically expressed as shown in Equation 12 below.

Equation 12 below shows a method of generating DFT matrix (WN) of size N.

$\begin{matrix} {W_{N} = {e^{{- j}\; 2{\pi/N}} = {{\cos \left( \frac{2\pi}{N} \right)} - {j \cdot {\sin \left( \frac{2\pi}{N} \right)}}}}} & \left\lbrack {{Equation}\mspace{14mu} 12} \right\rbrack \end{matrix}$

The kth row of DFT matrix of size N×N and the element of the nth column may be expressed as Equation 13.

W _(N)(k,n)=(W _(N))^(k·n)  [Equation 13]

Namely, when the DFT matrix is configured using Equations 12 and 13, it is desirable to select the row vector of the DFT matrix close to “0” or “N” as value k.

It is because when value k is close to “0” or “N”, the influence of the phase change influencing between respective symbols of the original signal becomes small.

In contrast, as value k is close to N/2, the influence of the phase change influencing between respective symbols of the original signal by the row vector of DFT matrix increases.

Hence, when the orthogonal codewords cover is selected using the DFT matrix proposed in the present specification, value k indicting the row vector index of the DFT matrix is defined to be selected from a value of which the absolute value (k−N/2)(abs(k−N/2)) is the largest.

For example, when the codewords cover having 16 bit length is configured, if 6 codewords covers are selected among 16 available codewords covers and used, the row vector index of the DFT matrix corresponding to the selected codewords cover may be determined as {0, 15, 1, 14, 2 and 13}.

Further, when each codewords cover corresponding to the row vector index of the DFT matrix is allocated to the UEs, the base station may allocate the codewords cover suitable to each UE in consideration of the current situation of each UE and the capability of each UE.

In this case, in each UE, the priority order of the codewords covers may be determined on the basis of various informations such as the importance of data, the currently remaining power situation, coverage class information, CQI, etc.

In this case, each UE is sequentially allocated from the codewords cover with the least influence of PAPR according to the priority order of the codewords covers.

Likewise, with respect to the information related to the priority order of the codewords cover, the UE may directly provide the information to the base station through PUSCH, PUCCH, or RRC signaling. Alternatively, the base station may assume information related to the priority order of the codewords cover based on the DM-RS, etc. directly transmitted by the UE.

Configuration of Codewords Cover in Consideration of Inter-Cell Interference (ICI)

When UEs located at the adjacent cell use the same codewords cover, inter-cell interference may occur.

In particular, in the case of extreme coverage UEs located at the cell edge, if an adjacent UE uses the same codewords cover, the influence of the interference reaching the cell of the extreme coverage UE becomes very significant.

Hence, hereinafter, a method of configuring a codewords cover for minimizing the inter-cell interference problem will be specifically described.

The extreme coverage UE used in the present specification is a UE located at the cell edge and may be expressed as a first UE, and a normal coverage UE is a UE located at the center of the cell or near the center of the cell and may be expressed as a second UE.

Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Using Codewords Cover

The influence of the inter-cell interference is significantly generated generally by UE(s) located at the cell edge, in other words, by the extreme coverage UE(s).

Here, the extreme coverage UE means a UE located at the cell coverage, and the normal coverage UE means a UE located at the center of the cell or near the center of the cell.

In contrast, the UEs located at the normal coverage which is not at the cell edge give relatively less influence of the inter-cell interference.

Hence, hereinafter, the method of allocating the codewords cover according to the coverage class differently by UEs in order to avoid the influence of the ICI will be described.

The coverage class may mean a class corresponding to the area(s) which are generated by classifying the area (or range) covered by the cell according to a certain standard.

Hence, the number of the coverage classes may be determined as the number of the classified area(s).

A UE located in a normal coverage (or a UE located in an area corresponding to a normal coverage class) may be expressed as a normal coverage UE, and an UE located in an extreme coverage may be expressed as an extreme coverage UE.

Specifically, normal coverage UEs may use an available codewords cover in order to enhance a multiplexing gain.

At this time, the base station may distinguish signals transmitted from the UE through the same frequency (or subcarrier) and the same time, i.e., through the same resource.

Further, the codewords cover used by normal coverage (class) UEs may be used in all cells in the same manner.

Hence, in this case, it is possible to configure the codewords cover in a manner that maximizes the multiplexing gain which may be utilized in each cell by enhancing the reuse factor of the codewords cover.

In contrast, the codewords cover allocated to UEs located in the extreme coverage, i.e., the extreme coverage UEs may be configured not to be reused in the adjacent cell.

As such, even if the transmission signal of the extreme coverage UEs interferes with the adjacent cell, the base station may distinguish the signal received from the UEs through the codewords cover.

FIG. 33 illustrates an example of a method of using different orthogonal codes depending on the coverage class proposed in the present specification.

Namely, FIG. 33 shows an example of extreme coverage UEs 3310 and 3320 using different codewords covers 3310-1 and 3320-2 between cells.

Here, the criteria for distinguishing or defining the coverage class in order to differentially use the codewords cover (by UEs) may be variously configured.

For example, the coverage class may be defined or configured based on the distance between the UE and the base station and the size of the receiving power (of the UE) in the base station.

Namely, when the receiving power of the UE is equal to or greater than a certain threshold, the corresponding coverage class is defined as a normal coverage class, and the base station may reuse the codewords cover between cells so as to be allocated to the UE.

Further, when the receiving power of the UE is equal to or less than a certain threshold, the corresponding coverage class is defined as the extreme coverage class, and the base station allocates the cell-specific codewords to each UE.

Further, the criterion of the coverage class may be set as the size of the interference influencing the adjacent cell.

Namely, when the influence of a specific UE to the adjacent cell is equal to or less than a certain threshold, the specific UE is defined as a normal coverage UE, and when the influence of a specific UE to the adjacent cell is equal to or greater than a certain threshold, the specific UE may be defined as an extreme coverage UE.

Likewise, the criterion for determining the coverage class may assume the coverage class value of each UE using the UL reference signal which the base station receives from the UE.

Further, the coverage class may be a predetermined fixed value or may be configured by the base station, and the base station may transmit the coverage class to the UE through a signaling.

Here, when the base station configures the coverage class, the base station directly informs the UE of the coverage class and may enable the UE to selectively determine the codewords cover.

Further, the base station may directly configure the codewords cover used by the UE instead of the coverage class information and transmit the corresponding codewords cover index to the UE through a signaling.

Here, the coverage class information and the codewords cover index may have been mapped in advance.

Frequency Hopping Method

Hereinafter, as a way to resolve an inter-cell interference which may occur when the UEs proposed in the present specification use the same codewords cover, a method of distinguishing a cell using a frequency hopping pattern will be described.

With respect to the frequency hopping method proposed in the present specification, all cells may share and use all codewords covers usable in the codewords cover length or repetition length of each UE.

Further, the frequency hopping method proposed in the present specification distinguish the UE allocated to each cell by applying the pattern of the frequency hopping for obtaining the frequency diversity differently per cell.

Here, the codewords cover allocated to each cell may be distinguished through the frequency hopping pattern, and thus the codewords cover vectors of each cell may be fully reused.

Further, the frequency hopping pattern may be set in the symbol group unit (e.g., slot unit, subframe unit, group unit of subframes) including the symbol unit or a plurality of symbols.

If the system to which the above-described frequency hopping pattern is applied supports the frequency hopping method of several units, the base station may inform the UE of the unit of the frequency hopping pattern (or the unit of the hopping mode) that is used, through an RRC signaling, etc.

The selection of the frequency hopping pattern and/or codewords cover allocated to each UE is configured by the base station, the configured frequency hopping pattern and/or codewords cover may be indicated to the UE through a signaling.

Further, the base station allocates the codewords cover fitting the coverage class of each UE and determines the frequency hopping pattern according thereto.

At this time, the base station already knows all UEs accessed to the cell of the base station and the frequency hopping pattern of the adjacent cell, and thus the optimized resource distribution becomes possible.

Further, each UE may dynamically configure the frequency hopping pattern and the codewords cover using the predefined (or pre-promised) function using cell I, UE IE (e.g., RNTI) or coverage class information.

Such a method of configuring the dynamic frequency hopping pattern and the codewords cover has an advantage of being able to reduce the signaling overhead in that a signaling does not need to be transmitted separately in order to indicate the frequency hopping pattern and the codewords cover to the UE.

At this time, the UE may determine both the frequency hopping pattern and the codewords cover for itself, and it is possible that only one of the two is determined for itself and the other may be obtained through the signaling of the base station.

Additionally, the above-described frequency hopping method may not be applicable depending on the situation.

To this end, the base station may inform the UE of the frequency hopping enable or frequency hopping disable information indicating whether the frequency hopping is possible, through a signaling.

The signaling may be an RRC signaling.

The UE having received a signaling indicating whether the frequency hopping is possible recognizes whether the frequency hopping is applicable through the received signaling, and the UE may (promptly) apply or not apply the frequency hopping according thereto.

Alternatively, the UE first recognizes whether the frequency hopping is supportable through the RRC signaling received from the base station, then the UE may obtain the parameter for the accurate frequency hopping through the DCI (DL Control Information) received from the base station and perform the following operation.

Alternatively, the base station may transmit the DCI information to the UE once more so that the frequency hopping is not supported.

Further, the base station may update the information related to the frequency hopping by additionally transmitting DCI information to the UE.

The purpose thereof may be to adjust the frequency hopping parameter accurately in order to more efficiently use the frequency resource or more effectively manage the inter-cell interference.

Further, when the capabilities for the frequency hopping between UEs are different, each UE may be configured to report the UE's capability related to the frequency hopping to the base station through the UL signaling.

In this case, the UL signaling reported by the UE may be transmitted in the form of message 1 (random access preamble) or message 3 (scheduled transmission) which is used in the random access process.

The base station may determine whether to use the frequency hopping of the UE based on the reporting of the UE and inform the UE of the determination.

FIG. 34 illustrates an example of a method of multiplexing an UL system of a user equipment (UE) by using a codeword cover and a frequency hopping pattern which are proposed in the present specification.

FIG. 35 is a flowchart showing an example of a method of multiplexing an UL signal between user equipments, which is proposed in the present specification.

Referring to FIG. 35, the UE receives control information related to the codewords cover used for the multiplexing of a multiple of UEs from the base station (S3510).

The codewords cover may have a mapping relation with the coverage class.

The coverage class may be determined using at least one of the distance between the UE and the base station, the size of the receiving power in the base station, and the size of the interference influencing the adjacent cell.

Further, the control information may further include at least one of the frequency hopping information indicating the frequency hopping pattern related to the transmission of the UL signal and the information indicating whether the frequency hopping is used.

Further, the frequency hopping pattern may be set differently per cell.

The control information may be received from the base station through the RRC (radio resource control) signal or DCI (DL control information).

Thereafter, the UE generates the transmission symbol of a specific length by repeating the data symbol in a specific time unit (S3520).

The specific time unit may be a symbol unit, a symbol group unit, a slot unit, a subframe unit, a subframe group unit, or a wireless frame unit.

Thereafter, the UE generates the UL link signal by applying a codewords cover of the specific length to the generated transmission symbol (S3530).

The codewords cover of the specific length may be an orthogonal codewords cover which is generated using the DFT (discrete Fourier transform) matrix.

The codewords cover of the specific length may be an orthogonal codewords cover corresponding to a specific row vector of the DFT matrix.

The row vector of the DFT matrix has the index of from 0 to a value at a specific length−1, and the specific row vector may be a row vector corresponding to the index close to “0” or the value of the specific length.

Thereafter, the UE transmits the generated UL link signal to the base station through the single tone (S3540).

Device to which the Present Invention is Applicable

FIG. 36 illustrates an example of an internal block diagram of a wireless communication device to which the methods proposed in the present specification are applicable.

Referring to FIG. 36, a wireless communication system includes a base station 3610 and a multiple of UEs 3620 located within the area of the base station 3610.

The base station 3610 includes a processor 3611, a memory 2612, and an RF (radio frequency) unit 3613. The processor 3611 implements the function, process and/or method proposed in FIGS. 1 to 35. The layers of the wireless interface protocol may be implemented by the processor 3611. The memory 3612 is connected to the processor 3611 and stores various informations for operating the processor 3611. The RF unit 3613 is connected to the processor 3611 and transmits and/or receives a wireless signal.

The UE 3620 includes a processor 3621, a memory 3622, and an RF unit 3623. The processor 3621 implements the function, process and/or method proposed in FIGS. 1 to 35. The layers of the wireless interface protocol may be implemented by the processor 3621. The memory 3622 is connected to the processor 3621 and stores various informations for operating the processor 3621. The RF unit 3623 is connected to the processor 3621 and transmits and/or receives a wireless signal.

The memories 3612 and 3622 may be inside or outside the processors 3611 and 3621 and may be connected to the processors 3611 and 3621 by well-known various means.

Further, the base station and/or the UE 3620 may have a single antenna or a multiple antenna.

According to the embodiments of the present invention, a multiplexing between UEs may be supported by using an orthogonal codeword cover which uses DFT matrix.

According to the embodiments of the present invention, an inter-cell interference may be prevented by allocating a codeword cover to a UE in consideration of a coverage class.

A method for transmitting an UL signal in an UL communication system of the present specification was described centering on the example of being applied to 3GPP LTE/LTE-A, but it is possible to be applied to various wireless communication systems such as 5G system as well as 3GPP LTE/LTE-A system.

The above-described embodiments are combinations of components and features of the present invention in a prescribed form. Each component or feature should be considered selective unless separately mentioned differently. Each component or feature may be executed in a form that is not combined with other components or features. Further, it is possible to configure the embodiment of the present invention by combining some components and/or features. The order of operations described in the embodiments of the present invention may be changed. Some components or features of a certain embodiment may be included in another embodiment or may be substituted with the corresponding components or features of another embodiment. It is obvious that an embodiment may be configured by combining claims which are not directly cited, or a new claim may be added by amendment.

The embodiments according to the present invention may be implemented by hardware, firmware, software, or a combination thereof. In the case of implementation by hardware, one embodiment of the present invention may be implemented by one or more of ASICs (application specific integrated circuits), DSPs (digital signal processors), DSPDs (digital signal processing devices), PLDs (programmable logic devices), FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), processors, controls, microcontrollers, microprocessors, and the like.

In the case of implementation by firmware or software, one embodiment of the present invention may be implemented in the form of a module, procedure, function and the like for performing the functions or operations described above. The software code may be stored in the memory so as to be operated by the processor. The memory may be located inside or outside the processor, and thus the memory may transmit/received to/from the processor.

It is obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that the present invention may be embodied into another specific form within the scope of the essential features of the present invention. Hence, the above detailed description of the invention should not be understood as limitative and should be understood as illustrative. The scope of the present invention should be determined by a reasonable analysis of the attached claims, and all the changes within the equivalent range of the present invention are included in the scope of the present invention. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method of transmitting, by a user equipment, a uplink signal in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: receiving control information related to a codeword cover used for a multiplexing of a multiple of user equipments from a base station; generating a transmission symbol of a specific length by repeating a data symbol in a specific time unit; generating the uplink signal by applying the codeword cover of the specific length to the generated transmission symbol; and transmitting the generated uplink signal to the base station through a single tone.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the specific time unit is a symbol unit, a symbol group unit, a slot unit, a subframe unit, a subframe group unit, or a wireless frame unit.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the codeword cover of the specific length is an orthogonal codeword cover which is generated using a DFT (discrete Fourier transform) matrix.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the codeword cover of the specific length is an orthogonal codeword cover corresponding to a specific row vector of the DFT matrix.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the row vector of the DFT matrix has indexes of from 0 to {(value of a specific length)−1}, and the specific row vector is a row vector corresponding to an index close to the value of the specific length or
 0. 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the codeword cover has a mapping relation with a coverage class.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the coverage class is determined using at least one of a distance between the user equipment and the base station, a size of a receiving power in the base station, and a size of an interference influencing an adjacent cell.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the control information further comprises at least one of frequency hopping information indicating a frequency hopping pattern related to transmission of the uplink signal or information indicating whether the frequency hopping is used.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the frequency hopping pattern is configured differently per cell.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the control information is received from the base station through RRC (radio resource control) signaling or DCI (downlink control information).
 11. A user equipment for transmitting an uplink signal in a wireless communication, the user equipment comprising: a radio frequency (RF) unit for transmitting/receiving a wireless signal; and a processor functionally connected to the RF unit, wherein the processor is controlled to: control information related to a codeword cover used for a multiplexing of a multiple of user equipments from a base station; generate a transmission symbol of a specific length by repeating a data symbol in a specific time unit; generate the uplink signal by applying the codeword cover of the specific length to the generated transmission symbol; and transmit the generated uplink signal to the base station through a single tone. 